

Bacteria are winning the war - cubix
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/07/antibiotic-resistance-bacteria

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adammichaelc
One interesting piece of this puzzle is that one of the body's own antibiotics
(well, technically it's an anti-microbial peptide) is cathelicidin [1], and it
is regulated by vitamin D. Anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of Americans are deficient
in vitamin D, depending on what cutoff you use to determine deficiency.

In other words, doctors may want to ease up on prescribing antibiotics until
they have checked a patient's vitamin D and taken care of that problem. Some
of the infections will likely go away after the body has enough fuel to fight
back.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathelicidin>

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tomkinstinch
Glad to see phage therapy mentioned. It is time to begin investigating it
again. While most of the world was focused on antibiotics, the Soviets were
researching phage therapy. Much of that work fell with the Wall.

