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Superbugs Reach UK

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    Posted: December 21 2015 at 4:13pm

Bacteria that resist 'last antibiotic' found in UK


By James GallagherHealth editor, BBC News website

Bacteria that resist the most common antibiotic of last resort - colistin - have been discovered in the UK.

Officials say the threat to human health is low, but is under ongoing review.

Scientists warned the world was on the cusp of a post-antibiotic era when such resistance was discovered in China last month.

Now checks have discovered the same resistance on three farms and in samples of human infections.

When all other antibiotics fail then doctors turn to colistin - that's why it is so important.

Doctors in the UK thought they had three years before colistin-resistance would spread from China to the UK.

But Public Health England and the Animal and Plant Health Agency began testing for it.

Public Health England has gone through the 24,000 bacterial samples it keeps on record from cases between 2012 and 2015.

Colistin-resistance was discovered in fifteen of them, including samples of Salmonella and E. Coli.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency has discovered colistin-resistant bacteria on three pig farms.

Analysis


The news will not be a massive surprise after similar discoveries in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

It raises the prospect of untreatable infections - what is known as the antibiotic apocalypse and threatens to plunge medicine back into the dark ages.

The DNA that gives bacteria resistance to colistin - the mcr-1 gene - can spread rapidly between species.

The concern is that colistin-resistance will now find its way into other superbugs to create infections that doctors cannot treat.

line break

Prof Alan Johnson, from Public Health England, said: "Our assessment is that the public health risk posed by this gene is currently considered very low, but is subject to ongoing review as more information becomes available.

"The organisms identified can be killed by cooking your food properly and all the bacteria we identified with this gene were responsive to other antibiotics, called carbapenems.

"We will monitor this closely, and will provide any further public advice as needed."

How resistance spreads

The Chinese resistance cases were down to overuse of antibiotics in agriculture.

Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics says 837kg of colistin was sold to British farms in 2014.

Coilin Nunan, from the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, said: "We need the government, the European Commission and regulatory bodies like the Veterinary Medicines Directorate to respond urgently.

"The routine preventative use in farming of colistin, and all antibiotics important in human medicine, needs to be banned immediately."

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said colistin made up just 0.2% of the antibiotics used in livestock in the UK.

A spokesperson said: "We are enhancing our surveillance for colistin resistance, and veterinary prescribers have voluntarily updated prescribing guidelines to restrict use of colistin in animals."

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35153795

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 26 2015 at 3:00pm
scary times a head,

no more; tatoos,body piercing,nose  jobs ,face lifts,boob jobs,dental surgery,root canal treatment, ect..

welcome back ;

amputations, ,death from minor cuts/infections,gas ganrene....

 and many more horrors from the past,

i think "PHAGES " might be our best bet ,

however  i believe the prosess is not refined  enough or there is a problem with it.... 


Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 27 2015 at 4:18am

New strain of 'super gonorrhea' could be untreatable

Experts have issued a warning to GPs in response to an untreatable strain of gonorrhea 
39

Gonorrhea could become an untreatable disease due to its growing resistance to antibiotics.

A new strain dubbed ‘super gonorrhea’ has surfaced, which is resistant to the antibiotic treatments usually given to patients with the disease.

The outbreak began in Leeds, with other cases having been reported in Oldham, Macclesfield and Scunthorpe. Some patients reported having sexual partners from other areas of England.

All cases to date have been transmitted through heterosexual intercourse.

Usually, gonorrhea can be treated by taking two different antibiotics simultaneously: ceftriaxone and azithromycin. The new strain is resistant to the azithromycin component of the treatment and is therefore currently untreatable.

Chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has written to GPs and pharmacists to ensure that they are prescribing the correct drugs in response to this outbreak.

If patients are only prescribed one antibiotic rather than the necessary two treatments, they will not get better and the disease could develop a resistance to the antibiotic the patient was taking, which is how a ‘super’ strain is passed on.

Health news in pictures


      In March, the BBC found that some online pharmacies had been selling only one half of the treatment to patients.

      Both an injection and tablet course is needed to treat gonorrhea, but patients were being sold the tablets only (azithromycin) on seven UK based websites – which may be why an azithromycin resistant strain has formed.

      Patients infected with gonorrhea may experience pain or burning when urinating, unusual discharge and unusual tenderness in the testes (for men) and the lower abdomen (for women). However, around 10 per cent will experience no symptoms.

      Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖

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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Flixxy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2015 at 2:51am

      Originally posted by carrbon20 carrbon20 wrote:

      scary times a head,


      no more; tatoos,body piercing,nose  jobs ,face lifts,boob jobs,dental surgery,root canal treatment, ect..

      welcome back ;

      amputations, ,death from minor cuts/infections,gas ganrene....

      i think "PHAGES " might be our best bet ,

      however  i believe the prosess is not refined  enough or there is a problem with it.... 



      Well this doesn't sound good. All the more reason to not have unprotected sex. I wonder how it got from China to the UK though?

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      Technophobe View Drop Down
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2015 at 3:28am
      Anybody's guess, Flixxy. 

       Welcome to the family!
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2015 at 7:52am
      Welcome Flixxy
      "Buy it cheap. Stack it deep"
      "Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government will come to the rescue, will be tragically wrong." Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary.
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 13 2016 at 11:41pm
      https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/758

      The emergence of MCR-1

      The discovery of the colistin-resistance gene in China was a global alarm bell, sending scientists scrambling to their labs to check for MCR-1 in their own countries. Two months later, it has already been found in 11 other countries, including Canada — and the list will only continue to grow.

      China

      Nov. 18, 2015: The superbug gene was first reported in The Lancet by researchers in China. Looking at bacteria collected between 2011 and 2014, the researchers found E. coli with MCR-1 on 21 per cent of slaughterhouse pigs and 15 per cent of raw chicken and pork. Sixteen hospital patients also had MCR-1 positive infections. “The effect on human health by mobile colistin resistance cannot be underestimated,” the researchers warned.

      Malaysia

      Nov. 18, 2015: In their Lancet paper, the authors pointed out that Malaysian scientists had published bacterial DNA sequences in late December 2014 with genes that look like MCR-1 — suggesting the superbug was already in Malaysia too. “The possibility that mcr-1-positive E. coli have spread outside China and into other countries in southeastern Asia is deeply concerning,” they wrote.

      Denmark

      Dec. 3, 2015: After the announcement from China, Danish researchers searched through their own bacterial data — previously collected under a surveillance program for antibiotic resistance — and found MCR-1 in six samples of E. coli. One was from an elderly patient with prostate cancer who suffered a blood infection in 2015; the other strains were growing on European chicken meat imported between 2012 and 2014.

      England and Wales

      Dec. 11, 2015: The Chinese announcement also triggers an investigation in the United Kingdom, where public health officials combed through the DNA sequences of more than 24,000 archived bacterial samples. Fifteen had the superbug gene; 13 came from patients and two stemmed from a single piece of poultry meat imported from the European Union. “These findings confirm, although newly discovered, the mcr-1 gene is already present in England and Wales in various bacterial species harbored by the human population,”

      The Netherlands, Portugal, Algeria, Laos, Thailand, France

      Dec. 17, 2015: The number of affected countries suddenly doubles overnight as The Lancet publishes five letters from researchers around the globe, all announcing that they, too, have detected the MCR-1 gene. It showed up in bacterial samples taken from tourists (in the Netherlands), people (Laos and Thailand), food (Portugal and France), farmers (Laos) and chickens and pigs (Laos and Vietnam). More MCR-1 was also discovered in China — this time recovered from people’s gut bacteria.

      Canada

      Today: Canada is the latest country to join the MCR-1 club. Government scientists combed through archived samples of bacteria and found three hits that were positive for the superbug gene: one from a human E. coli infection, two from lean ground beef samples. The earliest sample was collected in 2010 and actually pre-dates the China samples that were analyzed in the Lancet report from November.

      We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
      ~Albert Einstein
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote lucileburt Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 05 2017 at 10:28am
      Originally posted by carbon20 carbon20 wrote:

      scary times a head,

      no more; tatoos,body piercing,nose  jobs ,face lifts, This Dbol Cycle for Beginners boob jobs,dental surgery,root canal treatment, ect..

      welcome back ;

      amputations, ,death from minor cuts/infections,gas ganrene....

       and many more horrors from the past,

      i think "PHAGES " might be our best bet ,

      however  i believe the prosess is not refined  enough or there is a problem with it.... 



      All the more reason to not have unprotected sex :P . I wonder how it got from China to the UK though?
      lucile burt
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 05 2017 at 1:44pm
      Amidst all this doom and gloom, there is a ray of hope.

      This is a heartwarming story of how dutch pig farmers cut their antibiotic use by 65% and ended up with HEALTHIER pigs.   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-41132589/how-one-girl-s-illness-changed-what-a-nation-eats.

      I can't see all farmers adopting these methods, or those that do adopting them tomorrow, but it does show that alternatives are viable - even economically.
      How do you tell if a politician is lying?
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      Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 16 2017 at 8:43am
      All is not lost.  Our cleverest scientists still have a few tricks up their sleeves:

      A Century-Old Discovery of a Virus Could Become Our Solution to Antibiotic Resistance

      There's still hope.

      LYDIA RAMSEY, BUSINESS INSIDER
      16 OCT 2017

      Antibiotic resistance - the phenomenon in which bacteria stop responding to certain antibiotics - is a growing threat around the world.

      It's expected to kill 10 million people annually by 2050.

      And it hasn't been easy to develop new drugs in order to stay ahead of the problem. Many major pharmaceutical companies have stopped developing new antibiotics, and the drugs that are still in development have faced numerous stumbling blocks toward approval.

      So some drugmakers are starting to turn to other solutions, including one that's actually had a fairly long history: phage therapy.

      The treatments are made of bacteria-killing viruses called bacteriophages, or phages for short. Discovered in the early 1900s, bacteriophages have the potential to treat people with bacterial infections.

      They're commonly used in parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Unionas another way to treat infections that could otherwise be treated by antibiotics. Because they are programmed to fight bacteria, phages don't pose much of a threat to human safety on a larger scale.

      "There's huge potential there that regular antibiotics don't have," NYT columnist Carl Zimmer told Business Insider in 2015. "I think what we'd actually have to work on is how we approve medical treatments to make room for viruses that kill bacteria."

      A conversation about approval pathways is already underway, with a handful ofcompanies starting to get into the space. The trials, while still in early stages, could one day change the way we confront antibiotic resistance.

      A need for new options

      Dr. Paul Grint, CEO of one small company, AmpliPhi Biosciences, is trying to turn phage therapy into a tool that doctors might be able to one day use alongside antibiotics to treat serious infections.

      The company is working on phage-based treatments to treat Staphylococcus aureus, a bug implicated in sinus infections, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bug connected to lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis.

      There are a number of reasons why these treatments are gaining some momentum now: for one, there's a big need for antibiotics. In September, the World Health Organisation warned that the world is running out of antibiotics.

      "There is an urgent need for more investment in research and development for antibiotic-resistant infections including TB, otherwise we will be forced back to a time when people feared common infections and risked their lives from minor surgery," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a news release.

      For phages in particular, there have been a number of advancements that help make it more straightforward for phage therapy to go through the FDA approval process. Grint told Business Insider that includes being able to sequence the bugs, which would help determine that you're absolutely getting the right phages in treatment.

      AmpliPhi also has a way to manufacture the therapy that's up to regulatorystandards set up by the FDA.

      Using phage therapy in the US

      While phage therapy has been around for more than a century, Grint said there's still a lot of education that needs to happen to get doctors and researchers on board, especially in the US. In July, the FDA and National Institutes of Health hosted a workshop regarding bacteriophages, which Ampliphi and others participated in.

      There are also some researchers like a group at the University of California at San Diego that are researching phage therapy. In 2016, for example, researchers at UCSD used AmpliPhi's therapy to treat a professor at the university who had a drug-resistant infection.

      Even so, the US is treading carefully into the world of phage therapy. For now, AmpliPhi is able to recruit patients under the FDA's "compassionate use" pathway, making it mostly a case-by-case situation for now when other antibiotics have failed.

      The hope is to use that information, along with some phase 1 studies that are happening in Australia to gear up for a phase 2 trial in the US. The company's aiming to start that trial in the second half of 2018, meaning it still might be a while before we start using viruses to treat our bacterial infections.


      Source:http://www.sciencealert.com/century-old-viruses-save-millions-human-lives-antibiotic-resistance-health-medicine

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