Its an interesting conundrum!
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In specific individuals we can all do our bit – finish the course of antibiotics right to the end (and don’t stop because you “feel better”) and don’t waste time asking for them for things like sore throats (which in about 99.9% of all cases will never need antibiotics).
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As a doctor I can help by adhering to guidelines that help to guide which antibiotics to use when that varies regionally, and also try to avoid using them if they aren’t needed.
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But saying that – this is all like closing the barn door when the horse has bolted; its far far too late for these measures.
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In many countries around the world anyone can buy any kind of antibiotic, with no prescription or advice from doctors, leading to all sorts of resistant drugs.
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Probably even worse is the huge amount of antibiotics used in the livestock industry – “farming” cows and pigs and chickens in spaces that are crowded, filthy and disgusting and pumping them full of antibiotics so they don’t die has unquestionably contributed to the issue.
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There are plenty of research groups looking at new antibiotics – but these are so rare to achieve that the same thing will simply happen again.
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So the answer is I don’t really know what we can do – but we need to find an effective way to kill bacteria that uses something other than traditional antibiotics – or in 20 years time we’ll be seeing lots of people dying from things that are completely treatable now.
Alex makes a lot of good points – particurlarly the overuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry which is often overlooked.
In my lab and others we are coming up with new ways to kill bacteria or stop infection without using antibiotics.
For example, there are groups making new antibacterial materials that are modelled after naturally antimicrobial things like the wings of cicadas! Under an electron microscope, many natural things have tiny spike structures which ‘spike’ bacterial cells which materials engineers are trying to replicate (google ‘nanopillars cicada wings’ and look at the images, they are beautiful!)
In our group and others we are making new wound dressings and other treatments that contain antibacterial metals like silver and copper, in forms that are only released if there is an infection present. Bacteria should not get resistant to these.
In our group we are also making special polymer hydrogels – basically these look like a thin see through sheet of stiff gel. These are able to bind to bacteria and lift them away from infections – we’re developing these to stop infection related blindness for one purpose, but they have many more.
So although bacteria are cunning and can evolve faster than we can make new antibiotics, our group and many others are working on it 🙂
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joeyshepherd commented on :
I’m a microbiologist working on exactly this 🙂
Alex makes a lot of good points – particurlarly the overuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry which is often overlooked.
In my lab and others we are coming up with new ways to kill bacteria or stop infection without using antibiotics.
For example, there are groups making new antibacterial materials that are modelled after naturally antimicrobial things like the wings of cicadas! Under an electron microscope, many natural things have tiny spike structures which ‘spike’ bacterial cells which materials engineers are trying to replicate (google ‘nanopillars cicada wings’ and look at the images, they are beautiful!)
In our group and others we are making new wound dressings and other treatments that contain antibacterial metals like silver and copper, in forms that are only released if there is an infection present. Bacteria should not get resistant to these.
In our group we are also making special polymer hydrogels – basically these look like a thin see through sheet of stiff gel. These are able to bind to bacteria and lift them away from infections – we’re developing these to stop infection related blindness for one purpose, but they have many more.
So although bacteria are cunning and can evolve faster than we can make new antibiotics, our group and many others are working on it 🙂