Superbugs invade the US!!

Remove all ads!

Ok, I first heard of this about a week or so ago, in India. It worried me immediately, but now it's come to the US, Canada, and Europe (though only in small numbers at the moment).

So far, all cases have been in people who went to India for medical treatment, but the threat of a bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics, including those used to treat already resistant bacteria, has been a fear of doctors for years, and for good reason. This one is even worse, though. The gene that convers the resistance is easily transferrable between bacteria species, and so far all three cases in the US have involved different diseases with the same resistant gene. This means that the gene could spread to already existing diseases.

So far, no one in the US or Canada has died from any of these diseases, but there have only been 5 cases between the two nations and no word yet on how they were treated. There are a few antibiotics that they aren't resistant to, but these are typically never used (likely why the bacteria aren't resistant to them) because they run serious risks to the patient as well, such as liver or kidney damage.

 

I remember going to the doctors with conjunctivitis when I was a kid. My mother was adivesed to use warm salt water to bathe my eye and not let anyone else in the family use the same towel as me. However, a few months ago I went to the doctors again with the same problem and was immediately given antibiotics. Thing is, over the years I have been prescribed antibiotics for everything from insect bites to sinusitis and have started to notice as alarming decrease in their effectiveness.
Unfortunately, we are now so reliant on the damn things that if we stopped using them we'd be dead in a decade! However, these superbugs are limiting the use of AB's so maybe it's giving us a chance to re-gain a proper immunity to the simple things. It could all be evolution in full view

Then again, maybe it's not. I dunno, I'm drunk

 

Hey Sil, you shouldn't be posting when you're drunk... you might get banned. Oooh wait... NOG is not Obama, you're safe.

Seriously, the thought that the NDM-1 could boost the resistances of disease causing bacterias against most antibiotics is scary.

 

There are a lot of antibiotic resistant bugs out there -- and they've been around for a while (even in the US). Does anyone remember the "flesh eating virus" (which is really a bacteria)? One of the big problems with the bacteria is it resistant to the most common antibiotics used to treat similar bacteria.

There are a lot of infections resistant, staf infections, e.coli, strep (some forms), salmonella -- I'm really not worried about a superbug.

 

IMO, this is just another scare tactic to make sure people take the necessary steps to protect themselves, but as long as they do so, there really isn't anything to worry about. Remember the so-called flu pandemic we were suposed to have last year? It was about as disastrous as the Y2K bug.

 

At this rate we're going to have people washing their hands in pure hydrochloric acid "to prevent the spread of disease"! What's that old saying about the cure being worse than the disease?

 

This is a serious issue, we really need to stop using antibiotics unless it is absolutely nescessary. I have even heard people saying they eat anti-biotics when they have a cold or the flue and I am no doctor but I was under the impression that both the cold and the flue are causes by virus against which anti-biotics do nothing.

 

Answer this: How many strains of bacteria have developed resistance to an antibiotic in the last twenty years?

Now answer this: How many new antibiotics have been developed in the last twenty years?

It's a no-brainer, really. If micro-organisms develop resistance to antibiotics at a rate faster than we can develop antibiotics which can overcome that resistance, we're losing out.

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics has led to the very real problem of 'superbugs'. It's not a scare tactic to point this out, it's just stating the facts.

---------- Added 0 hours, 1 minutes and 0 seconds later... ----------

Yes, the vast majority of colds and flus are viral.