Preparing for a post-antibiotic era?

[warmastoast]

I was reading the "fears of post-antibiotic era" thread and there was a lot of interesting advice interspersed among the fearful posts. Talking about the scrupulous approach to hygiene and disease-prevention skills our ancestors and public health systems had had in the era before antibiotics (which have been available for less than 100 years and may realistically be in effective in the next couple of decades).

Is this something anyone is consciously preparing for- either through direct action by limiting use of antibiotics, eating only organic meat, lobbying for regulation or more on the preparation side of building up important skills that have collectively fallen out of use?

Yes, we would need to be super-careful about cleaning wounds. I have been really guilty of just slapping a blob of antiseptic cream on any cut and sticking a plaster on top, which won't be good enough without the fall back of antibiotics being liberally available (and working).

I think you're right - it's a lack of care, with people grown used to the medical sector having a potion to 'fix things' and being able to bring bodies back on stream quickly with minimum inconvenience. In the future, they likely won't be able to so we'll have to look more to ourselves.

I have a fairly bellicose immune system in the first instance but the figures for eg current sepsis deaths (quoted in the AB research link) are quite frightening. A rather significant change in attitude is called for, I suspect.

That's the last plaster off now and it looks fine. Just a normal thumb with a small but healed 'cut' in it.

I suspect that 'small' is a significant word here. We seem to view small wounds as really not worth bothering about - but if they go bad (and the whole thumb looked very angry indeed the other night) then they can be quite difficult out of proportion to their size. Care is probably needed for every skin/body breach from now on.

piece on the BBC website today about colistin resistance found in the UK. Not a good development at all.

For a variety of domestic reasons, and coincidentally, I've acquired a great many small wounds on my hands over the past couple of weeks so have had the chance to experiment. It seems that cleanliness, disinfectant/antiseptic and - most importantly - giving the wound some time to heal without irritating it are the most important factors.

I am putting a couple of boxes of plasters on the next shop.

Have you seen the recent news about gonorrhea? A new super strain of gonorrhoea has appeared which is antibiotic resistant. must be worrying the medical world.

Oh there are whole bundles of societal implications for antibiotic resistance. We've become too used to them.

Plasters now on supermarket order. You tend to go through a good number of them but it beats the alternative, I guess.

Health and self-care needs to come back as a basic skill. People in my generation are far too used to going to their GP for anything a couple of paracetamol won't solve. SIL takes her two DC to A&E if they get a bad cold and posts about it on Facebook. Drives me mad.

On a personal note, I've taken antibiotics every day for the last 4 years after major surgery left me with a deficient immune system. I rely on antibiotics to keep me alive and it does scare me that unless new antibiotics are developed I'll die fairly young.

If anyone has any wise thoughts on boosting immune systems in a sustainable and low tech way, they'd surely be welcome, I think.

On the matter of the resistant gonorrhoea, there might be an interesting experiment that posters could do. If they have any family members who are potentially sexually active, ask them if they know what are the long term effects of untreated/untreatable STDs - and maybe add TB in for interest? If you can get past the 'Duh's and the 'You're weird's () I suspect that people will find that others have not a clue. And they better learn fast because if resistance spreads, what might (at the moment) be a minor social inconvenience that can be 'taken care of' by ABs could revert to being a scourge.

Honey is good for infected cuts etc.

Sugar can be used for wound care too.

I watched a documentary made at Gt. Ormand street. A patient had a surgical wound that was infected. They just tipped normal white sugar in it. As in a bag you get from the supermarket. No special sterilising or anything.

Things seem to be getting serious, I'm afraid.

UN Meeting on antibiotic resistance.

I don't think this means that things have taken a sudden turn for the worse cozie, just that the UN have decided they need to step in to do something about it. Although i wish they had a few years ago really.
I know there is a few things in the pipeline, but that are still in early stages of research and may take a few years for safe general use. Hopefully some of these can be fast tracked.

I hope so - and that some money is found to support the work. I was reading, a few days ago, about events in Syria in this regard and it didn't fill me with optimism.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that all ABs will simply stop working next Tuesday or something, Thomas. There's likely - as I understand it - to be a fair lead time for the whole range of them and in all circumstances and places.

There are grounds for some guarded optimism as long as we're careful with their use, ensure that we use other methods of infection control where at all possible and - importantly - fund the necessary research on new compounds. Don't panic.

anybody fancy lobbying the government to fund antimicrobial research?

My collaboration has tried several times to get funding and all we hear is not our remit, not close enough to deliverable to market, no interest in basic research, no industry support.

If the government is going to wait for pharma to get involved they have a long wait coming. If they don't fund further up the pipeline then we are dead in the water.

Have you contacted Antibiotic Research UK Ice ?

www.sciencealert.com/the-science-world-s-freaking-out-over-this-25-year-old-s-solution-to-antibiotic-resistance

That's interesting.

Thanks for the link - interesting, I'll keep an eye on them. Unfortunately they have only called for screening labs to apply so far...we are further up the drug discovery pipeline than that. We are trying to understand the underlying science behind drug-membrane interactions so we can design new classes of drug.

They're fairly reputable so a reasonable starting place, I think. Moreover, bear in mind that that link is to their 'front of house' public face. What is happening behind the scenes there is open to conjecture and might be worth pursuing?

Well my mate (scientist) back in Oz posted this so will ask him his thoughts (were both at Melbourne Uni). I work in cancer research these days so not up to date with this...