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Originally posted by article
"Super bugs," which can cause wide-spread disease and may be resistant to most, if not all, conventional antibiotics, still have their weaknesses. A team of Canadian scientists discovered that specific mixtures of antimicrobial agents presented in lipid (fatty) mixtures can significantly boost the effectiveness of those agents to kill the resistant bacteria. According to a researcher involved in the study, "This study may contribute to overcoming the lethal effects of drug resistant bacteria that is becoming an increasing clinical problem, particularly in hospitals."

This study also demonstrated a novel use of a new family of antimicrobial agents called oligo-acyl-lysyls, which have the potential to be combined with other drugs and lipid mixtures with similar properties to yield a platform for other specific applications. "As we've seen in the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany, bacteria can mutate to become super bugs that resist antibiotics. Thanks to this new, lipid-based antibiotic therapy, multidrug-resistant bacteria may begin to look more like Jimmy Olsen and a lot less like Superman."

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Originally posted by article
With the golden age of antibiotics waning, is it time to turn to other options to fight the ever-growing menace of drug-resistant bacteria? There are a few viable alternative therapies, which were sidelined due to the popularity and ease of treatment with antibiotics. But scientists across the world are now showing a growing interest in methods like phage therapy, anti-microbial nanoparticles and bacteriocins to deal with superbugs.

Phage therapy involves the use of naturally found bacteriophages to combat superbugs. Bacteriophages or phages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They were discovered in 1915, but with the success of antibiotics, the initial euphoria about using phage therapy to combat bacterial infections dissipated. Several trials and studies have successfully indicated that phage therapy demonstrates considerable promise for treating the increasing number of infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria, says Dr Mzia Kutateladze of the George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology.

Bangalore-based GangaGen Biotechnologies has developed a phage-based genetically modified protein, StaphTAME. The protein, set to undergo clinical trials, can prevent and treat Staphlylococcal infections, including MRSA, claims the firm. StaphTAME kills all strains of Staph including the superbug MRSA. The product has completed all preclinical development, says Ram Ramachandran, chairman of GangaGen Biotechnologies.

A more recent creation, anti-microbial nano-particles are polymers and peptides that destroy bacterial cell walls. These can be synthesized at low cost and in large quantities and have efficiency comparable to conventional anti-microbial agents.

Bacteriocins are proteins produced by bacteria themselves to fight and kill bacteria of other species. They can be used as a potential substitute for, or in addition to, existing treatments to fight bacterial infections.

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I worry that these "phage" bugs would kill good bacteria in your body (like your stomach) and create problems.

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Originally posted by Kith-Kanin
I worry that these "phage" bugs would kill good bacteria in your body (like your stomach) and create problems.

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Originally posted by article
Chemists at Brown University have synthesized a new compound that makes drug-resistant bacteria susceptible again to antibiotics.

It’s no wonder that medicine’s effort to combat bacterial infections is often described as an arms race. When new drugs are developed to combat infections, the bacterial target invariably comes up with a deterrent. A particularly ingenious weapon in the bacterial arsenal is the drug efflux pump. These pumps are proteins located in the membranes of bacteria that can recognize and expel drugs that have breached the membranes. In some cases, the bacterial pumps have become so advanced they can recognize and expel drugs with completely different structures and mechanisms. “This turns out to be a real problem in clinical settings, especially when a bacterial pathogen acquires a gene encoding an efflux pump that acts on multiple antibiotics,” said Jason Sello, assistant professor of chemistry at Brown University. “In the worst case scenario, a bacterium can go from being drug-susceptible to resistant to five or six different drugs by acquiring a single gene.”

New life for old antibiotics Bacteria can use efflux pumps to rid themselves of antibiotics, becoming drug-resistant until newer antibiotics are developed. By blocking those pumps, researchers can restore the potency of old antibiotics to which bacteria have become resistant.

Greenwald joined the team in his freshman year, after reaching out to Sello. “This project was the first real immersion I had into chemistry research at an advanced level,” said Greenwald, of Madison, Wisc. “It was an amazing opportunity to be able to use the tools of synthetic chemistry to address problems from molecular biology. It was definitely one of the most engaging aspects of my experience at Brown.”

Brown University funded the work. Greenwald was supported by a Royce Fellows Program.

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Originally posted by article
Scientists are reporting use of a new technology for sifting through the world's largest remaining pool of potential antibiotics to discover two new antibiotics that work against deadly resistant microbes, including the "super bugs" known as MRSA. Sean Brady and colleagues explain that an urgent need exists for new medications to cope with microbes that shrug off the most powerful traditional antibiotics. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, for instance, are resistant to most known antibiotics. MRSA strikes at least 280,000 people in the U.S. alone every year, and almost 20,000 of those patients die.

The researchers removed DNA from soil bacteria that wouldn't grow in the lab. Then, they put this DNA into different bacteria that do grow well in culture dishes, and these bacteria acted like incubators for the new DNA. The approach enabled Brady's team to study the substances made by the soil bacteria's DNA in the lab. With this "metagenomics" method, they identified two new possible antibiotics called fasamycin A and fasamycin B that killed MRSA and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis, which also is becoming more resistant to known antibiotics. They also determined how the new antibiotics work. "Metagenomics has the potential to access large numbers of previously inaccessible natural antibiotics," say the researchers.

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...and eventually the bacteria will become resistant to those new antibiotics. what happens when those "remaining pool of potential antibiotcs" become exhausted?
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"i don't have pet peeves, i have major psychotic fucking hatreds"

Vancomycin and Methicillin were developed in the 1950s. Is it any wonder that after half a century of using the same drugs over and over that eventually a resistance was developed? Finally, after decades, we are getting some new drugs that will work on these resistant strains.

But to answer your question, there are alternatives to the never ending search for new antibiotics. Check out my other posts in this thread. For example, you can block the mechanism bacteria use to pump out antibiotics from their cells, giving new life to old antibiotics. Or you could add lipids to your antibiotics to increase their effectiveness against drug resistance bacteria. Or you could go an entirely different route and go with phages. Phages are viruses that attack only bacteria and are safe for humans. Viruses mutate even faster than bacteria so we have nature fighting the arms race for us. Phages do have some drawbacks, but it's at the very least another option for us.
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

that's pretty ingenious.. makes me curious why cancer hasn't been cured yet.
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"i don't have pet peeves, i have major psychotic fucking hatreds"

they need some new weapons against bedbugs
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i zero bagged your mother

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Originally posted by Fast Luck
hassan-i-asher: majorin in takin pictures
dreamin bout wayne from catalina wine mixers
listen little friend stay outta the deep end
cuz you're less street than vampire weekend

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Originally posted by Fast Luck
they need some new weapons against bedbugs

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How about some: Old Weapons
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Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. - Archimedes

Health chief warns: age of safe medicine is ending

Antibiotic crisis will make routine operations impossible and a scratched knee could be fatal

The world is entering an era where injuries as common as a child's scratched knee could kill, where patients entering hospital gamble with their lives and where routine operations such as a hip replacement become too dangerous to carry out, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.

There is a global crisis in antibiotics caused by rapidly evolving resistance among microbes responsible for common infections that threaten to turn them into untreatable diseases, said Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO.

Addressing a meeting of infectious disease experts in Copenhagen, she said that every antibiotic ever developed was at risk of becoming useless.

"A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill."

She continued: "Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe, and elsewhere in the world. We are losing our first-line antimicrobials.

"Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units.

"For patients infected with some drug-resistant pathogens, mortality has been shown to increase by around 50 per cent.

"Some sophisticated interventions, like hip replacements, organ transplants, cancer chemotherapy, and care of preterm infants, would become far more difficult or even too dangerous to undertake."

Britain has seen a 30 per cent rise in cases of blood poisoning caused by E. coli bacteria between 2005 and 2009, from 18,000 to more than 25,000 cases. Those resistant to antibiotics have risen from 1 per cent at the beginning of the century to 10 per cent.

The most powerful antibiotics are carbapenems, which are used as a last line of defence for the treatment of resistant infections.

In 2009, carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae, a bug present in the gut, were first detected in Greece but by the following year had spread to Italy, Austria, Cyprus and Hungary.

The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the percentage of carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae had doubled from 7 per cent to 15 per cent. An estimated 25,000 people die each year in the European Union from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

In the UK, the Government pledged £500,000 for research into the threat last month.

Dr Chan was speaking as the World Health Organisation launched The Evolving Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance: Options for Action, a book which warns that breakthrough treatments discovered in the last century for flu, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV may become ineffective in the coming years.

She called for action to restrict the use of antibiotics in food production and a crackdown on counterfeit medicines. "Worldwide, the fact that greater quantities of antibiotics are used in healthy animals than in unhealthy humans is a cause for great concern," she said.

Discovering new medicines to treat resistant superbugs has proved increasingly difficult and costly, as they are taken only for a short period and the commercial returns are low.

Dr Chan continued: "In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. The cupboard is nearly bare.

"From an industry perspective, why invest considerable sums of money to develop a new antimicrobial when irrational use will accelerate its ineffectiveness before the investment can be recouped?"

She called for measures to tackle the threat by doctors prescribing antibiotics appropriately, patients following their treatment and restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animals.

But she said attention was "still sporadic" and actions "inadequate".

"At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential antimicrobials, essential cures for many millions of people, to become the next global crisis," she said.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/health-chief-warns-age-of-safe-medicine-is-ending-7574579.html
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"i don't have pet peeves, i have major psychotic fucking hatreds"

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Originally posted by article
When we take antibiotics to combat bacterial infections these beneficial bacteria can also be killed off, leaving us at risk of infection by harmful bacteria. Clostridium difficile is one of these harmful bacteria and is the leading cause of hospital infections in England and Wales. Treating them is becoming harder as it becomes more resistant to antibiotics. New ways of controlling C. difficile infections are desperately needed to replace ineffective antibiotics, and bacteriophages are one such technology being investigated.

Bacteriophages are naturally occurring viruses that target bacteria. Researchers at the IFR had previously discovered and isolated a bacteriophage that specifically targets C. difficile. The study showed that the administration of a specific bacteriophage significantly reduced the number of C. difficile cells and also the amount of toxin produced, without significantly affecting the other members of the gut microbiota. This suggests that bacteriophages could have great potential for use to combat C. difficile infections in hospital settings.

This bacteriophage shows considerable promise as a new therapeutic agent to control C. difficile infections in hospitals, with potential to provide a new weapon that is desperately needed in the battle against superbugs.

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Originally posted by Jon;
that's pretty ingenious.. makes me curious why cancer hasn't been cured yet.

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nonsense propaganda


http://www.labspaces.net/view_blog.php?blogID=304
god damn
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"i don't have pet peeves, i have major psychotic fucking hatreds"

..or don't watch it and just post a link of someone saying it's b.s. instead of actually forming an educated opinion of your own.
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<----------- WAR2 TRAINING VIDEOS ----------->

http://www.youtube.com/ClanAbsoluteSynergy

regardless of whether you watch it or not... i think the #1 reason there hasn't been a "cure" for cancer is very simple.. the big pharma companies have so much money tied up into chemo and drugs that if a real, safe, effective cure were made available to the public they would go completely broke.

a cure for cancer is a huge conflict of interests for the FDA and large pharma companies.
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<----------- WAR2 TRAINING VIDEOS ----------->

http://www.youtube.com/ClanAbsoluteSynergy

ron paul
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Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

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Originally posted by terror-kahn
regardless of whether you watch it or not... i think the #1 reason there hasn't been a "cure" for cancer is very simple.. the big pharma companies have so much money tied up into chemo and drugs that if a real, safe, effective cure were made available to the public they would go completely broke.

a cure for cancer is a huge conflict of interests for the FDA and large pharma companies.

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Originally posted by smurf_king

i rather be a pedophile than a homo

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chemo is worse than cancer itself and doesn't even work many times. if a "safe, effective cure" was released why couldn't they make money off that?
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"i don't have pet peeves, i have major psychotic fucking hatreds"

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Originally posted by Jon;
chemo is worse than cancer itself and doesn't even work many times. if a "safe, effective cure" was released why couldn't they make money off that?

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Originally posted by turtleman
A normal person wouldn't say that in real life because it's ridiculous and insulting. Yet here you are spouting the most hateful garbage that your demons can muster out of your darkened soul. All because of the internet.

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