to be really annoyed about antibiotics?

[WaterfallsOver]

Or rather their misuse. I have parent friends who run to the GP every time little Billy has a cough, demanding antibiotics, so many people see them as a panacea. I'm not medically trained but I know they don't work on viruses and many illnesses need to run their course with no medical intervention.

The news is telling us antibiotics won't work in a few years due to over/misuse. I feel really angry that selfishness and stupidity mean in a few years people may die from infections resistant to antibiotics :( if they were only used for serious illness perhaps we'd have a chance. There was a guy who died from resistant infection on the news :(

Oh sorry olgaga this thread moves fast!

NDM-1 spread around the globe in 18 months, according to Prof Tim Walsh

Yes this is the real nub of the issue - minimising inappropriate use is only one part of this story.

Because bacteria multiply every 20 to 30 minutes, they evolve very quickly and become resistant to antibiotics used against them.

In the past, this has not mattered because scientists were producing so many new types of drug, but in the last 15 years development of new antibiotics has almost ground to a halt, meaning bacteria are catching up fast.

I think what's needed is for governments to work together on a global basis to fund drugs research, decoupling research from profit and the need to recoup R&D cost from the sale of drugs.

This is an interesting discussion paper on incentive mechanisms.

Right, I finally listened to Andrew Read's talk over my morning cup of tea. I don?t think he makes claims (in a very lovely Kiwi accent ) that are very different from what many other people, including here on the thread, have said, except that he strongly stresses the evolutionary aspects. But, really, I don?t know a single microbiologist who isn?t very aware of the fact that microbes evolve very fast, it?s why we go back to stock cultures in regular intervals as part of good lab practice.
I agree with him that there isn?t an unlimited supply of useful chemical scaffolds for drug development. Discovering novel drugs is difficult and it is becoming more so. The sentence you hear a lot when industry people are talking about it is ?the low hanging fruits have been picked?. If you do find a novel compound then you also have to be able to make it in a sustainable way. This is the problem with many of the compounds coming from ethnomedizin screens. If it can be done in a chemical synthesis, great, if, like Bryostatin for example you have to harvest 1 ton of bryozoans to gain 1 g of the active compound it will never be made into a drug no matter how well it is performing in the assays. We can?t strip the oceans of bryozoans.
I think there is a need to find new compounds even though it is difficult but I?m sure there are still a few out there and we need to look after them well. I?ve said this upthread already. I agree that there needs to be government involvement because Pharma is not going to put the effort in if there is no money to be made. They are businesses after all, they won?t be around for very long if they don?t make a profit at some point. I also agree that people should try to live a healthy live but I don?t think this will save you from every infection (or other diseases) and it is actually very difficult to figure out what constitutes a healthy life style. Nutritional recommendations change all the time, just look at the changes in opinion about fat in the diet over the last decades.

Gracelo

Just curious, why do you use bryostatin as an example, it's an oncology compound? And actually, it is feasible that should the need and, critically, the resource be there, the natural product or structurally simplified analogues of complex antibacterial natural products could be made by total synthesis. Like the oncology drug that is now on the market, eribulin.

REF. healthy life style I have followed the Blood Type (by Dr Peter D'Adamo) Way of Eating for many years (ducks to avoid the flames) and (along with the Hay diet) I have remained completely healthy when I have been on it. Of course it's not the definitive answer but it's surprising how many diseases are blood type specific.

( I began it because I have a bad family history BTW) IMO it's worth looking at because so many people don't even realise why they are ill and it does give answers.

Which diseases are blood type specific?

Ps, the British government IS investing in drug discovery, 90 million , including several antibacterial projects. The technology strategy board (TSB) funds the BioMedical Catalyst, a competition open to UK SMEs. There is a report out on the BIA homepage.
So governments are doing something. In addition the EMEA and the FDA have been reviewing their clinical trial requirements, which were frankly not fit for purpose, especially for single pathogen trials. So although it is slow progress, things are being done to help the situation.

" many diseases are blood type specific"

Are you saying that people of certain blood types don't get certain diseases?

Sanjifair, bryostatin was just the first thing that came to mind, it is an oncology compound and it's also under investigation for Alzheimers. There are ways of synthesizing bryostatin but it's difficult and the yields are low.
I think most drug producers would prefer a compound which can be completely synthesized from scratch because chemical synthesis is easier to quality control than microbial fermentations or extracting and purifying something from plant material but some things we cannot synthesise. We had compounds which we tried to get made and experienced chemical synthesis specialists looked at the structure and said that there was no way of doing it because nobody has ever managed to make some bond present in that structure. Stereocentres are often a particularly difficult problem. If the compound in question is very very promising a company will throw money at it and try to come up with a synthesis anyway as is what seems to happen with bryostatin. This is more likely with an oncology drug or Alzheimer drug where the profit margins are higher. Very few companies would be prepared to spend a huge amount of money on the synthesis of an antibiotic.

It's not that certain blood types don't get certain diseases - but some diseases are more strongly associated with different blood types.
So for example you have a lower risk of heart disease if you are blood type O.

But blood type O is associated with an increased risk of non-melanoma skin cancer

Blood type A has a higher risk of ovarian cancer

Blood type A associated with oral cancer

Pancreatic cancer more common in type A blood group AB protective against pancreatic cancer, O had higher survival rates.

There's quite a lot of research on blood groups and susceptibilities.

Has anyone actually listened to the Andrew Read TEDMED talk where he explains the difficulties with the 'invent new drugs' route and why it isn't a long term solution.

My Dr only gives them for infection. I just had a course for mastitis and I was climbing the wall for 10 days before getting them

gosh this is interesting. Paper from last year Our novel finding indicates that the ABO blood group is one of the genetically determined host factors modulating the composition of the human intestinal microbiota, thus enabling new applications in the field of personalized nutrition and medicine

Affects malaria infection as well IIRC blood type O has some sort of protective effect against malaria which is why it is common in areas with endemic malaria.

Oh yes remembered correctly, interesting newspaper article

Yes that is interesting saintly I've got the Blood Type Encyclopedia and as I said before i'm not a scientist but it is odd that the whole thing has been ignored by the Health authorities because it is one way that could be used to save the NHS money. I've not been to the doc. with an illness for so many years i literally can't remember .

And if you think there's lack of funding and interest for bacterial diseases, then for parasites in developing countries, its even worse. Sigh!
There are often two, max. three, alternatives for treatment, usually toxic, etc. and not many companies produce them.

There is increasing institutional funding, but even with big labs doing high throughput screening, perhaps one or two possibilities have come out in the last 10 years or so.

Curiously, I was even told recently that there is very little in profit from flu vaccines and that is why few companies around the world do produce them.

It's a bit strange really. There's so much research out there on blood type and association with different diseases but it doesn't seem to have moved from basic lab research into being practically applied. But it seems a reasonably active area of research. For example I think one of the papers was saying that blood type A PLUS a particular infection = must higher risk for pancreatic cancer. While I have some issues with screening programmes you would think that information might be used for screening, or when someone presents with vague easily dismissed symptoms.

And yes if certain blood groups are associated with heart disease then you could target diet changes. Very very interesting that blood type can modulate gut flora as well - I think people are beginning to realise how that can be involved in disease as well.

Yes Lueji The more one hears about the profit motive the worse unbridled capitalism seems IMO.

saintly I know it's an American topic and maybe they use it more there. D'Adamo now studies the Genome along with the Blood Type which I haven't got into yet

Well genomics is supposedly the next big thing in medicine.......

Now this IS interesting First I've heard of it, anyone know any more? (I would perhaps worry a bit about introducing selection pressures - although are they new ones (?) - but interesting none the less)

Yes, phage therapy, the idea has been around for years. I predict it will be an uphill battle to get people to accept it if it ever gets licensed. Phages are also faster evolving than microbes or Eukaryotes which is a bit scary. I sort of like the idea but I'm also quite wary about it. It reminds me of all those cases where one organisms was introduced into a habitat to control a pest and that organism turned into yet another pest wreaking havoc, the cane toad in Australia for example.