How to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria

[Tero]

Er, no. I'm pretty sure the experiment has been tried. Most bacteria out there never see a man made antibiotic. So most of them out there, not inside people, never had to develop resistance.

[mistermack]

Er, no. I'm pretty sure the experiment has been tried.

Not such a silly idea then. I haven't heard of it, but it might have.

Most bacteria out there never see a man made antibiotic. So most of them out there, not inside people, never had to develop resistance.

No, of course the only ones to develop resistance are hospital ones. But they spread around, then. They have to get from one patient to another. They even move from one hospital to another, in another country, even. And that can involve all sorts of routes, outside of the body.

If the resistant bacterium finds that route occupied by thousands that we put there, it might well die before it finds a suitable niche to live and replicate in.

[Tero]

You will have to reaearch bacterial transmussion, vectors etc. There are entire books on this. Not my field, I know the inside of bacteria somewhat.

Viruses travel in droplets. The range of droplets depends on temp and humidity.

[mistermack]

Just looked up the MRSA bug on wiki. it says

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram positive coccus bacterium that is a member of the Firmicutes, and is frequently found in the human respiratory tract and on the skin. It is positive for catalase and nitrate reduction. Although S. aureus is not always pathogenic, it is a common cause of skin infections (e.g. boils), respiratory disease (e.g. sinusitis), and food poisoning. Disease-associated strains often promote infections by producing potent protein toxins, and expressing cell-surface proteins that bind and inactivate antibodies. The emergence of antibiotic-resistant forms of pathogenic S. aureus (e.g. MRSA) is a worldwide problem in clinical medicine.

What I'm theorising is that if the respiratory tract and skin of visitors, nurses, doctors etc etc are coming into contact with far more harmless strains than resistant strains, they are a lot less likely to pass a resistant bug to someone else.

It's not just about resistance though. If you select for strains that are less virulent, less likely to cause an infection, then you could reduce the need for antibiotic treatment in the first place. Which would of course slow down the evolution of resistant ones.

[piscator]

How would one go about selecting for worldwide staph traits? It doesn't seem quite the same thing as working with a tray of seedlings, or an array of petri dishes.

[JimC]

In fact, hospitals with the lowest rates of infection from antibiotic resistant bacteria achieve that by being absolutely fanatical about cleaning all surfaces, and medical staff being very thorough with personal hygiene, which somewhat mitigate against mm's suggestion...

[Hermit]

Is there any evidence that one kind of bacterium can crowd out another?

[Tero]

i didn't mean your exact experiment was done. I meant the experiment where different strains, MRSA and related Staphylococcus, were released to a space (medium) and monitored with time, to see what strains survived in competetion.

[Blind groper]

The solution to antibiotic resistance is so obvious, most people cannot see it. Fortunately, medical researchers can.

The solution is more antibiotics. See, I told you. Simple!

The thing is that we get antibiotics from microorganisms. They are made by microorganism A to kill off microorganism B, which is harmful to A. The first antibiotic, penicillin, was obtained from citrus mold. But numerous antibiotics since have been obtained from bacteria.

So how many potential antibiotics are there in the microorganism communities? In fact, the number is so large we cannot at this time even estimate it. Numerous potential antibiotics which would fix our current resistance problems totally. We just need an ongoing program of developing new antibiotics so that when one becomes ineffective, we move to the next. An arms race with bacteria.

What people do not realise is that traditional research has concentrated on a tiny fraction of the total number of bacteria. In fact, only 1 species in 100 can be grown in culture. The other 99 were not even known to exist until recently. The change has been DNA srquencing. Instead of growing bacteria in culture, the bacteriologist samples soil, or water, or whatever, and uses the polymerase chain reaction to produce a whole lot more of the DNA that was present in that sample. He then sequences the DNA. Turns out that 100 times the variety of bacterial DNA is present compared to what traditional methods would estimate.

So, simply, there is a vast amount of bacterial resource untapped. That includes vast amounts of new and novel antibiotics. Those antibiotics can be manufactured directly from the bacterial DNA, once the requisite research and screening is done (a very big and very expensive job).

The problem is not a lack of antibiotics. The problem is a lack of investment in antibiotic research. I have already (in the other thread) explained what must be done. Pharmaceutical companies will not do the research unless
1. The new drug is potentially very profitable. Not the case with novel anitbiotics.
2. The research is made cheap. This can be done with taxpayer subsidies.

The potential for new, novel, and very effective antibiotics is immense. It just takes the political will and the $$$ injected to make it happen.

[Sean Hayden]

You make it sound as though given a sufficient sample to choose from it should be impossible to strike out. What is that confidence based on? Why can't the unexplored space come up empty against some harmful bacteria indefinitely, or for so long it doesn't matter anymore?

Why should we be so optimistic?

[Tero]

Bacyeria are sufficiently different from mammals that yes, there will be new drug targets. Oral drugs are still hard to invent in a hurry. Many diseases will have injectable drugs in the future. Allows more complexity in the molecule.

[Blind groper]

Sean

I did not say it would be easy. In fact, I emphasized the difficulty. There are probably thousands of potential antibiotics "out there". Most will prove unsuitable for one reason or another. That is why screening is so important. Many candidates will need to be screened to get a few that do what we want them to do. But it is all doable, if we spend the money.

[pErvinalia]

In fact, hospitals with the lowest rates of infection from antibiotic resistant bacteria achieve that by being absolutely fanatical about cleaning all surfaces, and medical staff being very thorough with personal hygiene, which somewhat mitigate against mm's suggestion...

Yeah, instead of cleaning yourself methodically before entering a hospital, you stand in an isolation room and a big machine basically coughs and splutters all over you, covering you with bacteria...

[mistermack]

In fact, hospitals with the lowest rates of infection from antibiotic resistant bacteria achieve that by being absolutely fanatical about cleaning all surfaces, and medical staff being very thorough with personal hygiene, which somewhat mitigate against mm's suggestion...

What they are doing, with all the cleaning, is reducing the effective size of the environment that bacteria can inhabit. As well as killing any bacteria that are lying around. But if the environment is already occupied, by harmless strains, then you are effectively doing the same thing. Reducing the size of the environment available to the resistant strains.
Nobody is suggesting that cleaning stops, or should be reduced. If you are constantly releasing fresh bacteria, they won't be adversely affected by cleaning.

If you take the case of MRSA, that is commonly found on the skin and up the nose, there's a limit to how clean you can get the environment anyway.

Yeah, instead of cleaning yourself methodically before entering a hospital, you stand in an isolation room and a big machine basically coughs and splutters all over you, covering you with bacteria...

I think you might have missed the point a bit? These are specially bred, to be harmless strains?

[mistermack]

Sean

I did not say it would be easy. In fact, I emphasized the difficulty. There are probably thousands of potential antibiotics "out there". Most will prove unsuitable for one reason or another. That is why screening is so important. Many candidates will need to be screened to get a few that do what we want them to do. But it is all doable, if we spend the money.

I'm sure that there are thousands of potential new antibiotics out there if we spend the money. There will have to be, as time goes on, and resistance increases.
The thing is though, that if they have been in the environment for millions of years, then the bacteria will have evolved some degree of resistance mechanism already. And genes for that will be in the population to some degree. So once we start using it, for the bacteria, it's just a matter of concentrating genes that already exist, not mutating new ones.