To tell you to read this. Especially if you keep antibiotics at home.

[TornadoOfToys]

www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/antibiotic-resistance/en/

Obviously I don't think IABU, but I do think some people need reminding.

And to urge you to think twice about buying meat that says it may have been produced with hormones, antibiotics or other antimicrobial enhancers on the label.

I am just getting over what my GP believes to be a case of Campylobacter food poisoning, but we don't have the stool analysis result yet (should get it tomorrow). She then suggested that I should have a course of erythromycin if it proves to be Campylobacter.
However, I should be fully clear of it tomorrow, if all continues as is - so I won't be taking those antibiotics, because I shouldn't need them.

The internet medical sites also suggest that antibiotics are generally unnecessary in Campylobacter food poisoning, except in vulnerable groups, so I'll tell the GP I won't be needing them.

Also to avoid antibacterial products. From what I understand, they only kill specific bacteria, which means that the bacteria that don't die, can become resistant, stronger, and mutate. Look out for triclosan and triclocarban in antibacterial products.

Good old fashioned soap and hot water and bleach are good enough.

Look out for triclosan and triclocarban in antibacterial products and don't use products that contain them I mean.

Can I ask what might be a silly question? Not sure if it's already been covered.
I have used antibiotics twice in my life, is my body going to be better at fighting bugs because of this or is it that the bugs don't care about previous anti b use as they can now beat any anti b?
Does that even make sense?

Do people realise that, in terminal and elderly care, some people are given a course of antibiotics every few weeks in order to keep them alive? Their relatives kick off if they’re not treated and the GPs feel intimidated.

At what cost prolonging life in people whose conditions are incompatible with life and who have a terminal prognosis?

Haffiana I don't have the time or, frankly, the inclination to read through and try to decipher than now. The fact that it is permitted to feed enough sex hormones to fish to change their gender is enough to put me off thanks. And I'm happy with that decision!

I'm more interested in ab use at the moment. I merely was quoting the text on the label of meat found in the supermarket.

Yes true chicken paws It's not even very old people ,sometimes it's given EVERY DAY for months. It's strange because once they're withdrawn what happens?

The infection immediately reoccurs.

TornadoOfToys the fact that fish change sex is also due to OUR added hormones. Human contraceptive hormones, which are ingested by humans and excreted to pollute our waterways where the effect on fish and particularly fish reproduction is well documented. Contraceptive hormones also of course, affect farm animals and humans alike through drinking water. We do not yet know what the effect of these will be.

The UK no longer has the protection of EU law now that Brexit is underway, and we have a government who will bend over whichever table is nearest to be shafted by whichever country offers any trade deal as quickly as possible, even if this involves actively removing whatever EU law we currently operate under. So hormones are not currently an issue. They will be and they will be soon.

ColinFlower - It's not a silly question. Antibiotics don't affect your susceptibility to future infections: it's the bacteria that become resistant, not the patient. In fact, if you've previously been exposed to antibiotics there is a chance that the commensal bacteria in your gut, respiratory tract, etc. (i.e. the ones that normally live there) will have acquired resistance and therefore be less likely to be harmed by subsequent doses administered to kill invading pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria. That's not a reason to use them when you don't actually have a bacterial infection, though.

The whole picture is quite complicated because of the importance of bacteria to your body's normal functioning. You are actually a minority of your body: you contain about 10 trillion human cells but your gastro-intestinal tract alone contains about 100 trillion microorganisms. Without these you can't maintain effective digestive & absorptive function, can't acquire certain vitamins, etc. These commensal microorganisms also suppress the growth of invading pathogens. If you take a big dose of a broad-spectrum antibiotic you'll wipe out a lot of the bacteria in your gut (and elsewhere) and make it easier for pathogens to colonize, especially if they are themselves less sensitive - or resistant - to the antibiotic.

We have a highly evolved immune system that can clear most infections and then retain memory to eliminate any subsequent invasions very rapidly. The point of antibiotics was to act as a back-up when the immune system was overwhelmed by bacteria that had evolved mechanisms of immune avoidance (bacteria evolve much more rapidly than mammals: a generation for bacteria is a matter of hours or minutes, while for a mammal it's years or decades). Knowing how rapidly bacteria could mutate and potentially acquire drug resistance, Alexander Fleming - discoverer of penicillin - expressed the opinion that antibiotics would never be of any clinical use as bacteria would become resistant so quickly. The problem we have now is that resistance to common antibiotics is so widespread that less common drugs are having to be brought in to play sooner and the development of resistance to those will accelerate. Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can be a major problem in hospitals, is generally treated with vancomycin. However, there are now significant pockets of vancomycin-resistant S aureus. As others have pointed out, the use of vancomycin-related glyopeptide antibiotics (e.g. avoparcin) in agriculture has probably contributed to the spread of resistance.

Colin It is not whether you have had antibiotics before that affects resistance it is whether the bacteria has come across them and mutated so even a totally antibiotic-naive patient could be carried off by a resistant bug

Sorry to go off-topic, but drug use in agriculture also has other profound effects. For example, vultures have become almost extinct across Europe and Asia as a result of widespread use of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac (yes, the stuff in Voltarol) in cattle. Herds of cattle on open plains are treated with the drug and the animals are then not observed. Some of the animals die and are eaten by vultures, as well as jackals and so forth. Diclofenac destroys vultures' kidneys, so after eating meat from a few diclofenac-treated animals the vultures die.

Cultures such as the Parsi in India that traditionally practise "sky burial" - disposing of dead people's bodies by leaving them to be eaten by vultures - have found themselves having to abandon the tradition as there are not enough vultures.

Antibiotics in meat and dairy is the primary reason I have become vegan.

Wow (not in a good way!), I had no idea about that Skiiltan. It's horrifying how far-reaching the consequences of our actions can be.

My 1 year old has been on 8 courses of antibiotics since november... i have never asked for them so it ha been dr led

Slightly off topic bbbbb but unless there is a known underlying condition I would be questioning with a Gp why so many courses where needed and push for further investigations because to need so many wiyh no underlying cause is concerning or indicates the Gp may be slightly quick to reach for the prescription pad

Has the doctor explained what the problem is, Bbbbbbbb2017? Also, are these antibiotics given by mouth or topically (e.g. ear drops)?

So many people (esp. children) have allergic reactions to dairy. I used to, in my early teens and 20s so I stopped dairy , no more earaches, tonsillitis etc. etc. Meaning no more ABs !!!

@Bbbbbbbb2017 I'd be questioning that quite hard. Why so many?

DD1 had a persistent UTI last year but the third time it came back I insisted proper cultures were done, to make sure she was on the right drug, and then that they were done again a week after she came off the antibiotics to make sure the infection was actually gone. Our very sensible GP also ordered an ultrasound so we could check that there was nothing physiological going on (thankfully there isn't).

Also, do you have them on a probiotic? The DDs have been on one sachet of Biokult Infantis a day since mid October, and I swear it's making a difference digestively and they seem (knock wood) to be getting slight colds but getting over them - we've had no tonsillitis and no ear infections, both of which would have been mainstays of our winters before.

I'm willing to be told we're just lucky this year, and that it's all placebo by those who know more than me though.

Could someone please explain why it’s so important to finish the course? Is it to ensure the infection is fully gone to ultimately avoid further antibiotics?

@yorkshireyummymummy perhaps educate yourself about what is really happening in GP surgeries before spouting off such crap. GPs are leaving in their droves, committing suicide, off sick with stress and depression due to working conditions and practices are unable to fill vacancies due to this. If it were really £100k for a totally cushy job do you think we'd be in this situation right now? Fuck off.

Yes (but let's be polite ) teainbed I wouldn't be a GP for all the tea in china.

mishfish - If you think about what the antibiotic is doing, it's killing the pathogenic bacteria, or suppressing their replication to the extent that the immune system can kill them. Any population of bacteria will have a range of sensitivities to an antibiotic. (Although bacteria generally reproduce asexually [but see next paragraph], and therefore don't have any genetic mixing, they are very prone to mutations and there will therefore be some variation.) Obviously, the drug will kill off the most sensitive bacteria first but take longer to kill the least sensitive. If you only take part of a course of antibiotics you will kill off the most drug-sensitive bacteria but leave the least sensitive. With the drug-sensitive ones out of the way, the relatively drug-resistant bacteria will have a clear field to replicate, so the population will shift to being more drug-resistant. If this happens repeatedly you will end up with predominantly drug-resistant bacteria.

Remember that in most infectious diseases it's not actually the bacteria/viruses/etc. that make you feel ill, at least in the early stages of infection: it's your body's immune response to them. (If you didn't have the immune response you wouldn't feel so ill initially but the pathogens would replicate uncontrollably and eventually kill you.) The really ill-making phase of the immune response might be over while there are still pathogenic microorganisms in your body, so the fact that you're feeling better doesn't mean it's safe to stop taking the antibiotics, especially as the remaining bacteria will be relatively drug-resistant. That doesn't necessarily mean you will get ill again but it does mean that the population of bacteria in the environment is becoming more drug-resistant.

Also, bacteria are able to swap genes, either by bacteria simply picking up loose DNA from other bacteria that have been broken down (transformation), from being infected by viruses called bacteriophages that carry genetic material from other bacteria (transduction) or through the sexual reproduction that occurs in occasional generations of bacteria where structures called pili transfer genetic material from one bacterium to another of the same species (conjugation). This allows resistance to emerge in bacteria that haven't previously been exposed to the drug and can lead to enormous problems with multi-drug resistance. So we now have forms of gonorrhoea, for example, that are effectively untreatable. If you leave a reservoir of drug-resistant bacteria in your body by failing to complete your course of antibiotics, they may be held in check by your normal resident microorganisms but they will have the potential to confer resistance on other bacteria. And so it goes on...

Sorry, I meant [see third paragraph], not [see next paragraph]. I don't know whether anyone's reading all this waffle but I thought I'd better make that clear.

Tornadooftoys I think my bladder damage is the result of GPS maybe feeling under pressure not to prescribe. All the dipstick tests are positive for nitrates, leukocytes and blood but the lab results were negative hence the reluctance. But the infection is in the bladder walls and often not in the urine. Consequently the damage has just got increasingly worse over a couple of years so now the entire bladder is covered in mucusy cysts, little tears and there’s blood in my urine permanently. With proper antibiotic treatment earlier I don’t think I’d be in this state.