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Peter Radetsky, 1991, 1994, "The
Invisible Invaders"
Michael Shnayerson and Mark
Plotkin, 2002, "The Killers Within: the deadly rise of drug-resistant bacteria"
World Health Organization, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of
Antibiotics:
Tories shadow health spokesman,
Andrew Lansley:
News-Medical.Net
Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), Dec, 2003
Nature Biotechnology, January 2004
US News, December 2, 2004
Peter Radetsky, 1991, 1994, "The
Invisible Invaders"
- ... a bacteriophage, a virus that invades bacteria, can
cause its defeated host to produce as many as a hundred new, fully grown
viruses within half an hour.
- Bacteriophages ... attack no bacteria other than those
they are supposed to.
Michael Shnayerson and Mark Plotkin,
2002, "The Killers Within: the deadly rise of drug-resistant bacteria"
Whenever a newspaper obituary lists cause of death as
"complications" following surgery, chances were that a doctor guessed wrong in
terms of antibiotics -- or the bug had proved resistant to all of them. This was
code that all healthcare workers, hospital staff, and HMO providers understood
but few outside the medical world knew.
World Health Organization, Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of
Antibiotics:
has been over 70 years since the first life-saving
antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered. But in recent years, inappropriate use
of antibiotics has yielded these wonder drugs less and less effective. Read on
to learn more about antibiotic resistance and what you can do to help prevent
it.
- Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria that cause
infection are not killed by the antibiotics taken to stop the infection. Those
that survive carry genes that allow them to evade the drugs intended to
destroy them.
- Antibiotics do not directly cause resistance but they do
create an environment where the resistant strains can proliferate. Overuse of
antibiotics is cited as a cause of resistance.
- Infections caused by resistant bacteria fail to respond
to treatment, resulting in prolonged illness and increased risk of death.
- on't pressure your doctor to prescribe antibiotics for
viral infections. Antibiotics battle bacteria, not viruses. According to
researchers at the CDC, 50 million of the 150 million outpatient prescriptions
each year are unneeded.
- Follow prescription instructions. Measure liquid
antibiotics and take the full course for the full number of days. Underdosing,
skipping doses and stopping early can encourage resistant strains to develop.
- Ask your doctor if a short course of antibiotics will
work as well as a long one. Shorter courses give resistant bacteria less time
to take over.
- Don't save pills for later or use other people's
leftovers
Tories shadow health spokesman, Andrew
Lansley:
A recent survey of 2,000 nurses revealed that 68% of them
said they did not have access to 24-hour, seven-day-a-week cleaning services on
hospital wards, while 41% said they did not have time to clean beds between
patients.
News-Medical.Net
This "re-equipping and re-emergence" of a clone that
caused a pandemic 40-50 years ago could mean that community acquired MRSA will
spread faster and be more widespread than previously expected, warns an
international team of researchers who have been studying the bacteria
Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA), Dec, 2003
Phage therapy predated antibiotics by decades, but was
largely supplanted when antibiotics became available. Now, however, the emerging
threat posed by antibiotic-resistant pathogens is spurring a resurgence of
interest in phage, as a potential therapy to cure or prevent infections, and as
a tool to kill food-borne pathogens.
Nature Biotechnology, January 2004
A nearly forgotten therapy may yet reemerge as a savior
to this accelerating crisis of antibiotic resistance, one that has its roots in
Stalin's Russia, but which flourished briefly in the West. Growing levels of
antibiotic resistance and the exit of major pharmaceutical companies from
antibiotic development means that physicians may one day have no choice but to
adopt phage therapy for a growing number of other wise untreatable infections.
US News, December 2, 2004
Someday, people may look back on the 20th and 21st
centuries with nostalgia, as the time when it was possible to treat bacterial
infections. With antibiotic resistance on the rise, many antibiotics could be
nearly useless in a few generations.
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