
A Woman Was Killed by a Superbug Resistant to All 26 American Antibiotics - adanto6840
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/a-superbug-resistant-to-26-antibiotics-killed-a-woman-itll-happen-again/513050/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;single_page=true
======
madengr
Can anyone comment on using phages to kill bacteria. I read the this was
developed extensively in Russia during the Cold War.

~~~
Fomite
Phages are being researched. This literally comes up in every single HN thread
on antibiotics, so once more, posting my "Why Phages Aren't the Answer"
shortlist. Note that I love phage therapy - this is the problems as seen by
someone who doesn't think it's a dead end:

Phage therapy is neat, it really is, but there are a couple major issues:

\- There is no such thing as a "broad spectrum" phage. You can't do empirical
treatment using phages, and there's not really "off the shelf" phage therapy -
it tends to be a bespoke creation for a particular infection.

\- There's some serious regulatory problems, similar to those experienced by
fecal transplant treatments. We're not yet really equipped to think about
handling evolving, custom microbes as a treatment. - Because of the first,
it's going to require a considerable amount more lab capacity than most
clinical settings currently have, and considerable delays until treatment.

\- There's also some biosafety issues around phage prep, but those are easily
solvable. It's a great way to treat particularly resistant or hard to treat
infections, but it's not a particularly great general solution. There's a
reason it was abandoned in countries with easy access to antibiotics - they're
just roundly superior in basically every respect.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I find it almost impossible to take any article seriously that uses the term
"superbug". Journalists, please stop using it. People can understand words
like multidrug-resistant bacteria. Also shame on the reporter for not even
listing the species of the bacteria. I had to click another link to see that
it was Klebsiella pneumoniae.

~~~
scorpioxy
Also the term "American Antibiotics". I didn't realize that antibiotics were
citizens of specific countries.

More to the point, I wish these scare tactics would stop. Resistant bacteria
is nothing new and its true that we need ongoing constant research into
antibiotics and antibiotic-like substances but that's about it.

~~~
olliej
You are correct: resistant bacteria is not new. Resistance to /all/
antibiotics is.

The problem is that this was resistance can spread to even relatively
unrelated bacteria via horizontal gene transfer. This means that it is not
unreasonable to expect an increasing number of such fatalities.

The reason people are worried is that this literally puts us back to where we
were 80 years ago, in which a cut could actually kill you. Obviously we've
come a lot further in understand how contamination occurs, and how infections
spread so i suspect that it won't be as bad overall (reduced amputation,
faster correct response) but it won't be smooth sailing as usual.

------
noodles23
My bet is on the Chinese with their enormous pig farms which feed every pig a
constant cocktail of antibiotics to ensure they grow faster to be the ground
zero for an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.

Edit Source: A Chinese government official in charge of a meat-producing SOE
boasted about it during a presentation seeking foreign investment

~~~
ceph_
The same practice is used by meat producers in the US.

In fact the practice was invented here.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock)

~~~
Fomite
Though we're not particularly heavy users of colistin in livestock, unlike
China, which is specifically called out in the article.

