
A Novel Way to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria - LinuxBender
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-novel-way-to-fight-drug-resistant-bacteria/
======
drenvuk
I love this. Previously there was a story about using viruses in order to
combat drug resistant bacteria[0]. The more tools we have to kill them off,
the better. It's only tangentially related but my feeling is that we've barely
scraped what's possible with viral, bacterial and protein engineering though.
I can't wait until we start treating them much like we treat transistors and
circuits. The building blocks are even nearly the same size at this point.

[0][https://mashable.com/2018/03/11/bacteriophage-viruses-
from-p...](https://mashable.com/2018/03/11/bacteriophage-viruses-from-pond-
treat-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria/#7at.qoFsaGqU)

~~~
andreygrehov
Came here to write about this. Phage therapy[0] is an extremely interesting
topic and there are a number of startups working in this direction. It's
funny, but in Eastern Europe (Georgia, Russia, Poland, etc.) phage therapy is
used broadly for many years, whereas US is just catching up.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)

~~~
xenadu02
People (in the west) have been writing about phage therapy and how
revolutionary it will be for 20 years now. It still hasn't arrived.

Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease, then
having phages on-hand suitable for that specific bacteria (or some system to
culture them). Using the "wrong" phages is useless and there are hundreds of
thousands (or even millions) of strains.

Bacteria also evolve phage resistance and phages themselves evolve to target
other harmless bacteria in cases where their targets are eradicated.

Phage therapy will probably end up being one component of a multi-prong
strategy but it is hardly a replacement for antibiotics.

~~~
andreygrehov
> Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease

That's exactly what they do in Eastern Europe. They work with each patient
individually. Here is a good read [0].

> A few weeks later, the Georgian doctors called Rose with good news: They
> would be able to design a concoction of phages to treat Rachel’s infections.
> After convincing Rachel’s doctor to write a prescription for the viruses (so
> they could cross the U.S. border), Rose paid the Georgian clinic $800 for a
> three-month supply. She was surprised that phages were so inexpensive; in
> contrast, her insurance company was forking over roughly $14,000 a month for
> Rachel’s antibiotics.

[0] [https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-
viruses-a...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-viruses-are-
the-new-antibiotics)

~~~
xenadu02
> A few weeks later

A huge number of infections would lead to death within a few weeks. Critical
ones within days or hours.

I'm not saying we shouldn't explore phage therapy. I'm saying it isn't the
magic bullet supporters have been promising for 20 years. It isn't like
western medicine is ignoring phages, there are just a lot of issues to work
out.

------
DoreenMichele
_I believe that subtle differences, called polymorphisms, in the DNA of host
factor genes could explain why some individuals are more susceptible to
pathogens than others._

Or not so subtle ones, like having cystic fibrosis.

 _an alternative approach called host-directed therapy (HDT), a suite of
treatments whose goal is to enhance the host 's own immune response rather
than relying exclusively on antibacterial drugs._

I've been doing this for close to 18 years. Zahidul Alam is welcome to shoot
me an email if he wants to talk about this stuff some time.

 _Some promising examples of HD include commonly used drugs for non-infectious
diseases—verapamil and metformin, for example which modulate inflammation and
increase host antimicrobial response to pathogens; cytokines, a group of
proteins that include interleukins, that induce host pro-inflammatory cell
signaling to kill pathogens; and nutritional products such as Vitamin D3,
which augments the host’s cellular defenses._

A nutshell version of what I know:

Excess acidity promotes inflammation and that promotes the creation of
biofilms. I've seen research indicating that if you reduce acidity, you can
break up biofilm. Biofilm is a major factor in antibiotic resistance.

Second: Forget recommendations to take Vitamin D or Vitamin C or Zinc to treat
a cold or whatever. Find out what nutrients you are short on and improve your
nutritional status.

Third: Glycoproteins are structures composed of proteins and carbs. These play
an important role in immune function. I found that getting the right carbs
made a huge difference, probably because it's a building block for
glycoproteins.

Fourth: Fasting. The gut is home to 70 to 80 percent of the immune cells in
our bodies. My belief is that the food we eat is the single biggest source of
income and, this digestion is the single biggest challenge to the immune
system. Giving the immune system a day off can allow it to redirect resources
elsewhere in the body.

------
kornork
It's shocking to me that half of the soap for sale at the grocery store is
antibacterial. This should be illegal.

~~~
Retric
Many things are antibacterial and work fine on your skin, but not in your
body. Drinking hydrogen peroxide for example would be at best pointless and at
worst harmful.

~~~
pietroglyph
I think GP isn't trying to say that antibacterial soap should be illegal
because it's harmful to humans, but that it should be illegal because it
creates resistant bacteria.

~~~
Retric
If it’s not medically useful, I don’t see the benifit of avoidance.

Bleach is a highly effective antibacterial substance, it’s also toxic but
that’s not a major problem for floors. Hell, bacteria have had billions of
years to adapt to sunlight, it still kills them fairly quickly.

------
darkerside
The human body is truly incredible, and the immune system in particular. Each
of us has a custom designed garbage collection system tailored for our bodies.
I predict the next big leaps in medicine will come from empowering and
leveraging that system to fight everything from infection to cancer.

~~~
ams6110
The body's immune system can attack the body itself though. Cautious approach
is needed.

~~~
darkerside
Agreed, autoimmune diseases are obviously something to be wary of. Not similar
to wildfire management, I think we're being foolish if we don't leverage the
forces that have powered a natural ecosystem for millennia, instead of trying
to replace them.

------
jxramos
Can anyone complete the last sentence in this paragraph, I'm very intrigued
what its actually attempting to refer to

> HDT also aims to balance host reactivity at the site of infection by
> reducing or preventing an excessive inflammatory response, which can damage
> internal organs and can even kill. This is achieved through cellular
> therapy, in which a specific population of bone marrow cells is injected in
> a host’s body, reducing and preventing tissue.

Preventing tissue what??

~~~
darkerside
I assumed preventing tissue inflammation

------
fineoldcannibal
This is essentially the basis of Ayurveda - boosting the host immune system to
attack the disease instead of using a foreign agent to attack the disease

------
tchaffee
This approach is encouraging. I would also like to see more research with the
opposite of antibiotics: probiotics. Which doesn't need to mean yogurt. I'm
talking about something similar to the approach recently used with mosquitoes
where infertile males were bred and released, hugely reducing the population.
That type of thinking.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Tricky though, given that bacteria reproduce asexually[1]. However it might be
possible to use horizontal gene transfer to do something similar.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#Growth_and_reproducti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#Growth_and_reproduction)

