antibiotics

oh yeah, and for the ladies, they can give you thrush.

I also have top-down concerns. I don't generally trust doctors, or, rather, the medical "establishment"--just the fact that they don't recognize alternative, holistic practices (not to say those are the be all/end all, but they're not even allowed in the building). I'm especially weary about doctors who loosely prescribe antibiotics. (And the rush of people to get antibiotic'd up in light of the anthrax scare just reads, from a distance, like a bad conspiracy movie.)

They don't destroy your immune system, but they can prevent it from developing by spanking any unfriendly bacteria before your body can accquire immunity.

People who take them/doctors who prescribe for flu/colds = idiots. Colds are caused by viruses. Antibiotics only work on bacteria. They are obviously useful for secondary bacterial infections, but most people with a sniffle don't develop them, so there's no real argument for prescribing them.

Their indiscriminate nature often does lead to thrush and gut issues if used in excess, which is obviously an argument fornot overusing them.

Having said that, antibiotics are possibly the most important medical advance of the twentieth century. Before their discovery there was often very little that could be done about bacterial infections. People regularly died from something as innocuous as a boil.

Cipro is the anthrax antibiotic here and is also prescription only also. (well all antibiotics are.) Cipro saved me from the evil kidney infection once.

Thank you for fixing my rotten italics.

Er, I'm not a medical professional, but have been on antibiotics, on and off, for the past year - these have been my survivial strategies.

You should ask your doctor about other things you can/should do (and if your doctor is male, he may not be thinking about the yeast end of things, as he's not likely to have experienced that agony, so you might want to talk with a female medical professional).

JEEZ...

I *WILL* NOT GET YEAST INFECTIONS.

I wish Nick would stop thinking about my end.

i've only gotten antibiotics twice! 1 of those times is now! i'm excited!

What, in your LYFE?? I wouldn't have survived childhood without them, that's for sure. You must have been a healthy baby.

i guess! i don't know, i mean, unless my mom got them for me at one time or something. i just don't remember ever taking them, and other kids would always be like "yea i have so and so, i'm on antibiotics." i thought it sounded so impressive

Kind of like how I really wanted a retainer. Everyone else had one.

drinking on antibiotics c/d

Depends on the antibiotic!

If they gave you a cephalosporin, I would be superduper careful. Some of them react with alcohol in essentially the same way that Antabuse does, i.e., horrible horrible vomiting.

I am terrified of antibiotics and have never taken them in my life, I think

?? I seriously don't see how it's possible for a kid to grow up and never take antibiotics. Didn't you ever have ear infections, Strep throat or like a billion other childhood illnesses that call for them?

Eat plenty of yogurt

I think I had some hearing problems when I was a baby - not sure how they solved those. think I had some kind of tube put in my ears? never had strep throat. 'bout the worst I had was chicken pox. other than that it was just food poisoning, flus, and really really bad colds. xp

I feel TERRIBLE.

like I forgot it was possible to feel this terrible

I'm allergic to penicillin (and, according to my doctor, all the other -illin antibiotics).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/health-science-technology/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/dr-arjun-srinivasan-weve-reached-the-end-of-antibiotics-period/

this is really potentially great news (and fascinating)

The researchers, at the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, turned to the source of nearly all antibiotics - soil.

This is teeming with microbes, but only 1% can be grown in the laboratory.

The team created a "subterranean hotel" for bacteria. One bacterium was placed in each "room" and the whole device was buried in soil. It allowed the unique chemistry of soil to permeate the room, but kept the bacteria in place for study.

The scientists involved believe they can grow nearly half of all soil bacteria.

Chemicals produced by the microbes, dug up from one researchers back yard, were then tested for antimicrobial properties.

The lead scientist, Prof Kim Lewis, said: "So far 25 new antibiotics have been discovered using this method and teixobactin is the latest and most promising one.

Tests on teixobactin showed it was toxic to bacteria, but not mammalian tissues, and could clear a deadly dose of MRSA in tests on mice.

Human tests are now needed.

The researchers also believe that bacteria are unlikely to develop resistance to teixobactin.

It targets fats which are essential for building the bacterial cell wall, and the scientists argue it would be difficult to evolve resistance.

"Here is an antibiotic that essentially evolved to be free of resistance," said Prof Lewis. "We haven't seen that before.

"It has several independent different tricks that minimise resistance development."

BBC article which includes link to the Nature article about the discovery.

Wow, cool.

The researchers also believe that bacteria are unlikely to develop resistance to teixobactin.

*sideeye

From the Discussion:

Teixobactin binds to multiple targets, none of which is a protein (Fig. 3e and Extended Data Fig. 7). Polyprenyl-coupled cell envelope precursors, such as lipid II, are readily accessible on the outside of Gram-positive bacteria and represent an ‘Achilles heel’ for antibiotic attack28. The target of teixobactin, the pyrophosphate-sugar moiety of these molecules, is highly conserved among eubacteria. The producer is a Gram-negative bacterium, and its outer membrane will protect it from re-entry of the compound (Fig. 3e and Extended Data Fig. 7). This suggests that the producer does not employ an alternative pathway for cell wall synthesis that would protect it from teixobactin, and which other bacteria could borrow. Resistance could eventually emerge from horizontal transmission of a resistance mechanism from some soil bacterium, and given the highly conserved teixobactin binding motif, this would likely take the form of an antibiotic modifying enzyme. However, although determinants coding for enzymes attacking frequently found antibiotics such as β-lactams or aminoglycosides are common, they are unknown for the rare vancomycin.…The properties of teixobactin suggest that it evolved to minimize resistance development by target microorganisms. It is likely that additional natural compounds with similarly low susceptibility to resistance are present in nature and are waiting to be discovered.

The pull quote saying "unlikely to develop resistance" is a bit breathless but it seems like for Gram-positive bacteria to acquire resistance they'd have to eliminate highly-conserved aspects of cell wall precursors or, like, evolve an outer membrane.

oh boy

http://www.statnews.com/2015/12/03/superbug-antibiotics-europe/

Fuck

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/The_Stand_cover.jpg

uh oh

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/12/nevada-woman-superbug-resistant

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03595-3

Potentially good news about discovery of a new antibiotic. Obviously this will be some years away, subject to clinical testing etc etc. Was reading relatively recently that a lot of pharmaceutical companies don’t prioritise developing or researching new antibiotics anymore so this could be the biggest development in some time.