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 :(

Cote, I'm interested in how your paed can tell anything from a swab without a culture? Tell us more!

Humans are fallible and value their lives (that applies to medics too) it's not an ideal world.

coted'azur I've just been gargling with T tree for a fluuy sore throat and it has cured it no toxic side effects at all.It has to be used fresh and not mixed with stuff (like the Boots one) apart from warm water of course If you read saintly's link it explains everything.

As for garlic and other foods - Nobody is disputing that garlic is antibacterial/antiviral when rubbed on some bacteria/infection so measurably effective in that case. However, there doesn't seem to be anything definitive on whether or not eating garlic will cure infections like antibiotics do.

I am guessing that is because what we eat gets digested before being absorbed into the blood stream (like all other foods) and so cannot reach wherever the bacterial disease is as "garlic".

ppeat - Gargling isn't ingestion, so I'm not surprised that you lived to tell having gargled with tea tree oil.

"Fluuy sore throat" passes on its own, you know, so I wouldn't read too much into getting gradually better with tea tree mouthwash.

As the papers linked to say, cote d'azure. They also say that there is no evidence that t tree oil is any more effective on MRSA than on any other bacterial infection.

Well I don't think anyone is suggesting swallowing it, but given that the antibs that messed ds1 up were given for a severe skin infection, his current lot - 10 years later are for a skin infection, and ds2's only ever course was for an infected wound then it's definitely of interest to me. Thinking about it ds3's only ever course was for an external infection as well.

Did come across a few trials looking at using TTO to reduce MRSA colonisation in ICU - which of course could potentially have a large effect. Unfortunately the results weren't that encouraging (although it does seem to kill MRSA in vitro - so may be worth pursuing).

I think the point though cote is that in the not too distant future you would be able to say 'will cure infections like antibiotics do' because they won't. It may be that in the not too distant future eating garlic is more effective than taking the (ex) antibiotic.

I'm tempted to find myself a poultice making course (although I suppose there may be resistance to many of the active ingredients in poultices now if they were cashing in on penicillin or similar).

Im not suggesting that eating garlic is going to be effective by the way - am saying the antibiotics will be useless, so you may as well eat garlic, or chicken soup or whatever.

It might not definitive but I cured a nasty toothache with garlic, fresh whole lemon and good honey which I liquidised with water and took it 3 times a day and it cured it My dentist was very impressed. Surely a medicine like normal ABs go down the same way as my garlic mix?

No ones mentioned the healing power of high dose Vitamin C, particularly intravenous Vitamin C.
Have a look at theStory of a Man who became so ill with white out pnemonia intensive care doctors wanted switch life support off but pulled through after taking IV Vit C

Rooney - There is something called Rapid Strep Test that tests for the most common bacteria behind tonsillitis. You can even buy it off Amazon. Maybe mention it to your doctor next time your DC have tonsillitis. Actually, if he doesn't know about it, maybe find another doctor.

thanks cote.

Interesting Cote, my dd1 suffers all of the time with tonsils. I can always tell if it was viral as the antibiotics don't kick in obviously as they do when it is bacterial. I get really annoyed that they never do a test when it is so easy, especially when she has it literally every 3-4 weeks - that is a lot of antibiotics...

jimjams - So we agree: Tea tree oil and garlic are probably not effective antibiotics except for dermal infections, since the former is toxic when ingested and the latter is digested and hence cannot reach the site of infection with its antibiotic/antiviral properties intact.

Imho, as antibiotics start being useless, new ones will be developed because there will be increasing demand for them. I don't think the worst case scenario of there being no more antibiotics that work isn't a remotely likely one.

I haven't read all the posts on here but there anther factor that is making it harder to treat with antibiotics and that's the patients not taking the course in its entirety.

If you have a bacterial infection and your GP prescribes 7 days of antibiotics you should take the full 7 days to ensure that the infection is eradicated. But sometimes people take the antibiotics for 3-4 days feel better and don't finish the course, not all the infection is killed and it can then resurface later only this time is more resistant to the antibiotics originally prescribed thus you need a higher dosage or different drug making.

My dsis does this with both my nieces if they have eat infections r tonsillitis she only gives them medicine for a couple of days ten wonders why they spend mot of their time ill

I'm amazed that you routinely get antibiotics for tonsillitis. Our paed doesn't prescribe them no matter how much I beg unless the test shows bacteria.

"There are 'natural' antibiotics"

No there aren't.

Quite a few antibiotics are natural, and originally isolated from fungi or bacteria.

Also, just because something works in a petri dish, it doesn't mean it will work in a living organism.
See toxicity, as mentioned before, but also stability and metabolisation.

Imho, as antibiotics start being useless, new ones will be developed because there will be increasing demand for them. I don't think the worst case scenario of there being no more antibiotics that work isn't a remotely likely one.

Just because you think it, it doesn't make it true.
At some point the rate of discovery will be achingly too slow, even with enough resources.

Oh wow. I actually thought that things were true because I thought them. Thank you for this revelation, Luejl

For throat and mouth infections you might as well gargle with salt water - it's just as effective and a damn sight cheaper and easier that Tea Tree or faffing around with garlic and lemons!

But a bacterial upper respiratory tract infection can become life-threatening pneumonia, which is the fifth leading cause of death in the UK.

It's all very well talking about parent friends who run to the GP every time little Billy has a cough, demanding antibiotics, presumably this mother was thought over-reacting in much the same way.

I think we are lucky to live in an age where people don't routinely die through lack of medical care, and have perhaps forgotten how dangerous these infections can be.

Olgaga I think people do expect to get instantly well. Which is why they take antibiotics for a virus rather than sitting it out.

I think you'll find that people want to get well as soon as possible because they daren't take time off work.

Sitting it out is all very well, but it doesn't help if your symptoms worsen and you are still turned away, and end up with a chronic long-term condition, as my sister has!

I buy them on the internet and abroad ( and sometimes manage to persuade GP to prescribe just in case) I cannot afford to have time off work with the cystitis I get from time to time or the dreadful tonsilitis which strikes sometime over the winter most years and where I have on several occasions been fobbed off without antibiotics only to become very ill indeed, when I know antibiotics will cure it rapidly.

Obviously, what I was saying there was that the world being left with no antibiotics that work is an unlikely one, in my humble opinion. (As opposed to 'I think this, therefore it is')

We have been told for decades that we will soon have no oil, but new technologies have made previously unprofitable fields viable. And that is a finite resource, which antibiotics conceivably are not. Similar economic calculations will likely take place as bacteria develop resistance to more antibiotics and it will be profitable for firms to develop new ones.

Quite Olgaga. I am one of those with a chronic chest infection - most likely cause thought to be a chest infection which was allowed to lie untreated for too long. And by chronic I mean most of the Winter permanently with chest infections, which isn't an awful lot of fun.

There is some nonsense spouted in this thread. I'm impressed by the people who can tell they don't need to bother the doctor as their infection is viral. I'm equally impressed by the doctors that can determine bacterial vs viral for a chest infection without sending a mucus sample off.

Putting cost to one side, the process should be:

• possibility of a bacterial infection > send to the lab
• anti-biotics only prescribed based on a lab result, unless it would seriously risk the patient's health waiting for that result
• ensure people take the full course
• additional research/financial incentives.

I agree with Cote that eventually Pharma companies will start developing new antibiotics because the demand will mean they can charge more for them but it takes an awful long time to go from discovery to market and loads of compounds will not ever make it through the regulatory process. It is really difficult though to find novel, antiinfective, drug-worthy compounds. Of the positive hits we find in our screens a large number will be already known compounds, of the unknown ones a large percentage will be cytotoxic, or not stable, or not suitable for drug development for whatever other reason.
Drug development is all well and good but there is a real need to look after the still working drugs we have better until we have new drugs in the pipeline (and then not to repeat the mistakes we made with the current batch of antibiotics).

There's no need to worry, anyway. I'm sure somebody down thread said that garlic cures bubonic plague..........

Cote,
I just find it interesting that people put forward their opinion on these matters without back up from evidence.
What do you base your opinion on?