
New antibiotics effective against resistant bacteria in mice - antirez
https://presse.inserm.fr/en/new-antibiotics-developed-by-inserm-and-universite-de-rennes-1/35666/
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jupp0r
Nice, now let's please pass laws to prohibit this being given to farm animals
under high penalties and international prosecution.

~~~
darpa_escapee
For reference, 80% of antibiotics used in the US are used in agriculture [1].
Animals are fed antibiotics to prevent infection, but they’re also fed to
animals as “growth promoters” [2].

60% of infectious diseases in humans originate in animals, and 75% of emerging
infectious diseases in humans originate in animals [3].

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638249/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638249/)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804117/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1804117/)

[3] [https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-
diseases.html](https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html)

~~~
boldlybold
Point (2) is no longer true as of 2017 (in the US, 2006 in the EU) [1]. I'm
happy to see the FDA getting on top of this regulation. Now let's end careless
spraying of antibiotics on crops. [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#United_States)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-
orange...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-oranges-
florida.html)

~~~
hvidgaard
Re: Point (2), it's going in the right direction, but at least in Denmark it
is very much used in a "preventative" manner in the pork industry. It took a
dive when the regulation came into effect, but in the last few years not much
have happened, and we still have a MRSA problem out of control.

Independent sources say that more than 90% of all farms with pigs have an MRSA
infection. The butcheries reported in 2014 that 88% of all pigs was infected
with MRSA. Every 1 in 3 pack of pork is infected and weak and elderly people
should be careful with pork in general because of this risk.

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tryptophan
Seems like it has never been tested in humans. Lets hold the hype train for
now.

Promising drugs like this a dime a dozen. Proving that they work from this
stage is the hard part. This is what big pharma specializes in.

~~~
rolleiflex
Antibiotics don’t work on humans. They work on bacteria in humans. Your
sentiment is generally correct for most other types of medical research, but
antibiotics generally pass the human testing fairly easily, provided that they
don’t also kill the human they’re tested on.

~~~
maxerickson
Don't be so tiresome. They obviously mean that they hope that the drugs don't
kill or excessively harm the human.

Antibiotics that kill cilia or kidneys or livers are doing something or other
to humans, in addition to working on microorganisms.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This is awesome. We underestimate how much antibiotics have made our lives so
much better. I hope they make billions in profits.

~~~
nvrspyx
Story time: A few years ago while I was in Uni, I came down with a sore
throat. Strep throat had been going around, so I assumed that was it. I went
to the college clinic to get a doctor's opinion and medication. I told him
that I thought it was strep, but the doctor wanted to run some tests to see
what it was specifically, but he also said, "In the meantime, I'm going to
prescribe a large doses of penicillin to get a head start and kill it since
it's definitely bacterial." Fast forward a few days and I'm even sicker.

The doctor called saying the tests were negative and we wanted to test to see
if it was viral instead. Nothing came back. Then, he wanted to test to see if
it was STD, but the tests take longer to come back. While waiting for results
and continuing to take penicillin per my doctor's directions, I continue to
get sicker. The infection had moved from my throat to my gums, then to my
lips, then to a couple of fingers (that I accidentally slammed between a door)
and my genitals.

At this point, the doctor is convinced I have an STD because it's on my
genitalia despite insisting that it started in my throat. He said it could've
been transmitted orally. He runs every STD test under the sun, although he
sent the samples in for the wrong tests the first time, and everything comes
back negative. Since they all come back negative, he is convinced I have HIV
considering how quickly it spread. He orders that test.

A few days later while bedridden and during finals week, I get a call from a
new doctor saying the HIV test came back negative and to come in so she could
examine me herself. Considering how sick I was and for how long, she said that
I clearly should have been hospitalized, despite the previous doctor that I
saw nearly everyday and saw how long I had a fever for (2 weeks straight) kept
telling me to just get rest. She also said that he never tested for strep
throat, despite me insisting that's what I thought it was on the first visit.

The new doctor says that she thinks it's strep throat too (which the previous
doctor ruled out without testing) and she runs as many tests against it as
possible. Turns out that I had antibiotic-resistant strep throat that became
resistant due to the penicillin that the previous doctor was so quick to
prescribe to "get a head start". It turns out that the doctor had been fired
and she was his replacement...for good reason.

Anyways, antibiotic-resistant infections are no joke. They get real bad, real
quick. Plus, a shitty doctor can create it by prescribing medication nilly
willy and force a potential HIV scare that you have to deal with for like a
week. Those three weeks were the worst of my life, not just because of how
sick I was, but also because I was convinced (since the doctor was) that I had
HIV, forced to confront the person I assumed I contracted it from, and go
through the worst pain in my life every time I had to take a piss.

~~~
bluedevil2k
I don’t understand, how did it become resistant due to the penicillin? And it
seems you’re blaming the doctor for this, but penicillin would be the natural
first course of treatment here.

~~~
nvrspyx
I mainly blame the doctor for not testing for strep and the multiple times he
was "convinced" it was something else without testing for it. Under no
circumstances should a doctor say "I'm convinced you have HIV. The tests will
confirm this".

Furthermore, penicillin is only suggested for group A strep, which has already
been declining in effectiveness since the 80s. It also shouldn't be given
simply as a precaution until you know what bacteria you're dealing with. It
was probably already a resistant strain of strep, but the way the following
doctor explained it to me was that by introducing the penicillin, it made it
more resistant to other antibiotics that I should've taken instead. The only
course of action I had was to wait it out. She said she could have tried other
antiobiotics, but there was no way to tell if it would work. Luckily, I was
already recovering by the time we got the results back for strep throat.

P.S. The person I contracted the strep throat from was fine after about a week
of clindamycin.

EDIT: I’m no doctor myself. I’m just going based on what I was told. If the
second doctor gave me bad information, then I’ll be happy to assume that both
were shitty doctors. That wasn’t the only time I had horrible experiences with
that clinic (completely forgot to document multiple doctor’s visits and weeks
of PT I had in relation to a sports injury and I lost my redshirt eligibility
as a result as there was no proof of the injury). That clinic was the only
option I had with student-athlete health insurance. But, I’m not changing my
mind on the first doctor after everything else, regardless of the penicillin.

~~~
masonic

      I mainly blame the doctor for not testing for strep 
    

Strep has to be _cultured_. In the meantime, the care you were given was
absolutely appropriate.

~~~
nvrspyx
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that lab tests for other
bacteria need to be cultured as well, such as staph, which he did request labs
for. Again, I'm not saying penicillin wasn't appropriate because I'm not a
doctor. However, he continued to test everything but the one thing I asked him
to, which it turned out I had. As I also said in another comment, he told me
to continue using the high doses of penicillin (500mg IIRC) throughout him
being convinced I had something viral, then an STD, and then HIV without ever
changing the dosage and despite my condition getting progressively worse.
There's multiple things I blame him for, the most upsetting being the
statement-of-fact that I had HIV when I didn't. I also don't believe he was
fired for no reason.

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rodgerd
To be rendered ineffective within years as farmers start dumping them into
cattle as a growth promoter.

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brohee
Obviously it had to be public research, because big pharma is a lot more
interested in managing chronic conditions...

Pretty glad my taxes helped pay for that research...

~~~
travisp
It's great that there are some new antibiotics, but I don't get this claim
that "big pharma" won't develop new cures and only manages chronic conditions.

First, it's factually false. There are now _multiple_ Hepatitis C cures for a
formerly chronic (and eventually fatal) disease, let alone all the other
chronic conditions that pharmaceutical companies have cured or diminished. And
"big pharma" companies have gotten to the same stage as these teams with
antibiotics.

Second, it doesn't even make sense unless you treat "big pharma" as a single
monolithic entity. In reality, it's many many companies, including startup
pharmaceutical companies, all competing against each other. I don't think of
bacterial infections generally as chronic conditions in the first place, but
if one company makes money on a drug that manages some chronic bacterial
infection, there's no reason that another company would be worried about
taking away profits from the first company.

~~~
m3kw9
Say startup company develops drug A that will compete with big pharma drug B
which is making billions a year, and envisions it to make 7 billion in the
next 5 years. An internal analysis from big pharma calculate drug A could wipe
out half of that =2.5 billion. Big pharma buys out the startup for a billion,
close them down indefinitely. Couldn’t that happen?

~~~
wins32767
Getting a drug to market is horrifically risky all the way up through approval
(and still somewhat risky post approval). ~1/1000 compounds get to market and
~1/100 drugs make it from Phase 1 (first in human/safety) to sale. By the time
the odds are decent that a drug will get approved, the sponsoring company will
have sunk much of the ~$1 billion it takes to get all the way across the line.

At that point the valuation of said startup is going to be approaching the
expected life time value of the drug (less a discount for risk of a late
failure and the time value of money). Any acquirer might as well finishing
getting the drug and its new patent protection the rest of the way to market.

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capkutay
I know there's a lot being said about super bugs...but is the expectation that
we just keep developing stronger antibiotics? is this something can be
sustained over the next few decades/centuries?

~~~
opportune
I think if we ever phase out animal agriculture we will be relatively safe.
You don't have to worry about superbugs if you don't create places for them to
develop, which we effectively do by giving billions of dirty animals low doses
of antibiotics indefinitely.

Serious bacterial illnesses in countries with good health systems are already
pretty rare. The vast majority of them come from unsanitary food practices

~~~
meesles
Won't there always be somewhere though? Until we have a fully developed planet
with no empty land, there's going to be swamps, tar pits, decomposition in
nature and a plethora of other strange things on Earth that could give
bacteria places to grow. Not to mention space-bacteria!

If all of our countries with health systems designed for our bacteria aren't
equipped to handle more advanced bacteria, wouldn't it take just one explorer
to bring back a species-threatening disease?

~~~
opportune
Sure, but that somewhere would be very unlikely to have antibiotics, making
the development of further antibiotic resistance unlikely. Non-antibiotic
resistant bacteria is very easy to treat and is essentially a solved problem.

The space thing is irrelevant. You can't develop pharmaceuticals meant to kill
things you don't know anything about

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Madmallard
Good, now let's make sure they're actually not super toxic to humans
beforehand rather than lie to people and cover up evidence until public outcry
causes them to be taken off the market.

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cm2187
So another end of the world that turns out to be not the end of the world...
wake me up when there is a real wolf.

~~~
olliej
It’s in mice, so no guarantee it survives being used in humans.

Even if it does work in humans it’s likely at least a decade from being safely
usable in humans.

And finally: there are already tens of thousands of people dying from
previously treatable infections. I would expect that number to be millions
eventually

~~~
londons_explore
If I were one of those tens of thousands of people, I would be buying this
substance from a dodgy chemical synthesis person...

~~~
wins32767
If you were one of those tens of thousands of people dying of a resistant
bacterial strain you'd likely be in intensive care... =)

For the chronic resistant infections, I'm not sure how many people would be
willing to roll the dice.

