Possible Antibiotic for MRSA Superbug 210
darkmeridian writes "Merck has discovered a possible treatment for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a virulent superbug resistant to many current antibiotics. The new compound, platensimycin, was found in a sample of South African soil and works by preventing the bacteria from assembling fatty acids into its cell membrane. This mechanism of action is novel among antibiotics, most of which currently block DNA assembly or protein assembly. Of course, this product still has to undergo human testing, but apparently looks promising."
Superbug vaccine... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh well... I guess it's good that they may actually get some treatment options for this disease. It sounds horrible. According to http://citypaper.net/articles/2005-03-03/cb2.shtm
So if some stranger in the supermarket asks you to look at their rash and wonders if it's contagious... don't hesitate to punch them. Or maybe you guys don't live in quite the redneck neighborhood that I do...
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:5, Informative)
As a result, they weren't able to close the wound immediately, and in fact had to debride it a number of times. Eventually, they had to put him on vancomycin (once it was clear he had an antibiotic resistant strain), which is a very powerful antibiotic with a number of side-effects.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:2)
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting how most of the antibiotics -- this new one and including the first one -- penicillin, are sythesized and produced by fungi. There is a constant battle for nutrition and space between the bacteria and the fungi -- some kind of an evolutionary yin and yang. One will always try to overtake the other and will develop new mechanisms for resistance or attack.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:3, Informative)
If the drug companies "benched" and old drug for say 10 or 20 years then there is a very good chance that it would become effective again.
The same evolutionary pressures that allow bacteria to gain resistance so quickly should help them loose it as well.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah. We need to redesign the financing structure of pharmaceutical development so research is profitable by itself, and the production/marketing/administration of the pharmaceuticals has to play by competetive market rules. Funding models comparable to other public-interest development would be far more appropriate than the current monopoly incentive.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm at home taking a antobiotic called cefazolin every 8 hours until the remainder of the infection clears up. But now I get to spend all day reading Slashdot. I guess somepeople would give their right foot to be able to do that. ;-)
Hey, what do you expect me to do, cry about it? Just keeping my spirits up.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:2)
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:2)
Know what I think when I read those? "Wow, that person can't read!"
They're not funny.
Stop it.
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:2)
Re:Superbug vaccine... (Score:2)
Source...code. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one more reason for us to not destroy our environment.
Re:Source...code. (Score:2)
Exactly... It reduces out ability to go into the third world, find new wonder chemicals, and patent them!!
At any rate, it looks like these researchers' business plan will procede as follows:
If only the US help system wasn't based on maximizing profit endlessly.
Re:Source...code. (Score:2)
Anyone can do it. If they have the time, the patience, the drive and the money.
Re:Source...code. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Source...code. (Score:2)
Do you have any clue about MRSA at all? Something that kills this would be incredibly useful, and profitable
Re:Source...code. (Score:2)
If only the US help system wasn't based on maximizing profit endlessly.
So you're telling me other countries have cures for these things? I figure they *must* if their health system is *so* much better... And it must be my imagination that they are clamoring for US made drugs.
Coming Soon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Coming Soon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Coming Soon (Score:4, Interesting)
Most Staph strains with antibiotic immunity gain it from a phague infection. While bacteriophagues are very large and complex there is not that much spare room for carry an extra resistance gene on top of what they drag around at the moment. It will most likely have to lose either the penicillin resistance gene or the tissue necrosis toxin gene to accommodate an extra antibiotic group resistance.
In the first case it can be smacked on the head using conventional penicillin derivatives.
In the second case the normal immunity mechanisms will take care of it. By the way, it is the necrosis toxins produced by MRSA which make it so dangerous, not the antibiotic resistance as such. They kill tissue around the infected zone before it actually gets infected creating the environment in which staph can trhive. In addition to that none of the immune system cells can traverse this dead zone and get to the staph either.
This is all IIRC of course, as it has been very long time since I have done something with mol biol and microbiol.
Re:Coming Soon (Score:4, Informative)
All forms of Staph aureus carry the toxin you mention, though, so there's really nothing to prevent you from getting MSSA necrotizing fasciitis.
And, yes, you pretty much need an intact immune system to successfully fight off infection. We can pump you full of every antibiotic known to man and cause every single bacteria in your system to explode, but without neutrophils and macrophages to clean up the resultant toxic mess, you're likely to eventually go into septic shock, which frequently means an eventual trip to the morgue.
Re:Coming Soon (Score:2)
IIRC, at least some varieties the necrosis toxin show statistically significant correlation with M12 phage infected populations and M12 has been shown to transfer it.
I may be wrong of course as I am remembering this more or less off the top of my head at the mo.
Re:Coming Soon (Score:2)
Dude. You're like... so cheery today.
"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, a new antibiotic is never the final word in the war on bacteria. The introduction of this new antibiotic, platensimycin, provides yet another opportunity for bacteria to mutate and to develop defenses against it. Eventually, the bacteria will become resistant to platensimycin.
What is not known is whether we can continuously develop new antibiotics that kill new antibiotic-resistant strains of germs and that will not kill human cells. As each successive generation of new antibiotics bombards the bacteria and as it adapts to the new medicines, will the bacteria become so powerful that it cannot be killed?
When will Washington ban the feeding of antibiotics to cattle? I am referring to the use of antibiotics as a food supplement. It is insane.
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2, Funny)
Simple: the bacteria will evolve into human cells. After all, if we can continue to make drugs which kill everything except human cells, they'll just have to evolve into human cel
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, at this point the antibiotics they are feeding animals is already resisted by a great many bacteria, such as the original penicillin. You won't be getting that from your doctor because so many things are already resistant to it. Instead, you'll get something like amoxicillin, which is quite different despite the similar name.
Since resistance to these antibiot
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
I beg to differ. Many families of antibiotics share the same core mode of action, with only a few side-chains different. E.g. the original Penicillin and modern Methicillin are both beta-lactam antibiotics, which attack bacterial cell walls (more specifically, the enzyme that assembles them). Penicillin resistance is due to the bacteria producing a new enzyme (beta-lactamase) which safely inactivates the antibiotic. Current Methicillin resistance has developed gradually, as each new variant of Penicillin is introduced, the enzyme mutates to accomodate it.
If two antibiotics are similar enough, resistance developed against one can confer resistance against the other. Agricultural use of Avoparcin is widely believed to have led to the development of Vancomycin Resistant Enterrococcus (VRE),
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, there's almost no research on this topic.
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Wasn't there a Dr. Martin Arrowsmith doing a study on the efficacy phages in the treatment of bubonic plague sometime back in the 1920s? What was the result of that?
Will I get modded down for the joke, by illiterates? We'll see.
Soviet-era phage therapy (Score:2)
The idea per se is not that revolutionary, phages have been known and used for sesearch purposes for a long time. I suspect there is a certain fear of injecting a virus (even one that supposedly hasn't been able to infect eukariotic cell) into a human patient. It is also concievable that bacteria could acquire resistance to phages. There are some bactera that cannot be infected with any known phages.
T
Re:Soviet-era phage therapy (Score:2)
I know about phage therapy from a personal experience, it was used to save my cousin after he had suffered a massive chemical burn complicated by skin infection (his kidneys and liver were overstrained by the burn so antibiotics could not be used).
Of course, phage therapy has many shortcomings (nothing is perfect, after all). But I think it could be possible to create a "gen
Re:Soviet-era phage therapy (Score:2)
I think that is good that science should be divided in such a way, a "just to be diferent" could make the research into fields that do not seem atractive at first sight just to find out a incredible result hidding in a corner.
With the amout of comunication we have today, in any givven area we end up having lot's of lot's of similar works in similar stuff. There is a "fashion
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
So until we start seeing much more significant resistance to antibiotics they're not likely to be cost effective.
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:5, Informative)
One nice side benefit was I got immunized against this sucker although that did carry some risk as well (experimental vaccine and all). Not that I ever expect to need it, but you never know.
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Yup, that works in some situations. But also explains why we now have poly-drug-resistant strains (such as M/V/ORSA, with "O" referring to ofloxacin rather than oxacillin, though the "M" tends to include the latter anyway).
Unfortunately, bacteria have a SERIOUS evolutionary advantage over humans, and this to
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
Re:"Scientific American" Reports on New Antibiotic (Score:2)
The Big Piture is: there is some (micro)organism out there which fights bacteria by producing some substance which bacteria don't seem to stand very well. The researchers come along, behold the successfulness of said organism fighting the bacteria, takes the snapshot of said substance and analyse its structure and principle of "work". Then, the chemical process is designed to synthetise that substance and adapt it for administering it to ill humans.
What
Won't last long.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So true.... (Score:4, Informative)
The S. Aureus is a bacteria that lives on the skin and is harmless most of the time. I said "most", because the bugs is really nasty in some specific area :
- intensive care : patients aren't in good shape, and the bug tries to enter into them. (Some strains are very good at crawling along needles of perfusion)
- surgery : the few specimens that survived the disinfection may try to jump into the wound. Bones (like after an accident) are an example.of wound that aren't very well protected against infection (among other reasons : lower blood flow compared to other organs and thus harder to bring white blood cells and antibodies).
Because it lives on the skin surface they can realy easily travel from one individual to another, just by plain skin contact (think handshaking or on object that everyone touch). And because they're harmless most of the time, there are no symptoms (the carrier isn't sick) and they can travel unnoticed until they reach one critical patient.
So the only patient that is feeling realy bad is the one at the end of the chain (the one in critical care). Among the chain, there's a lot of people who aren't sick (and don't give a fuck about it) and (mostly healthy) people that may have minor skin wounds (requiring some treatement) but don't follow their treatment as they should (because they feel well).
And that's one reason why bacteria are exposed to sub-lethal doses of antibiotics, some of them surviving better, and evolution (huh... sorry... Intelligent Design) doing it's job and making better superbugs.
Note: other reasons appart from bad usage of antibiotics are :
- Moronic prescrition / Pharmaceutical over-hyping : Doctor hears that superbugs are common. Doctors hears about (=gets brainwashed by marketing departement) new superdrug that kills superbug. Doctor start prescribing superdrug for *EVERY SINGLE CASE*, even when not needed. Superbugs become Hyperbugs. repeat ad nauseam.
That's why method are developped to help determine when and what drug is needed. As a student a worked in such a lab [genomic.ch].
- Industrial agriculture : Some huge agricultural corporation do very stupid things which all end up with environnement becoming polluted with antibiotics and resistant bacteria appearing "in the wild" due to exposition to sub-lethal doses.
Re:Won't last long.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually hoping that the first humans to start using this drug will be receiving it from an IV bag and will remain anchored to their hospital beds.
If a patient is carrying a bug that's resistant to all other commonly-used antibiotics, I don't really want them walking about on the street.
Re:Won't last long.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because hospitals are nothing but incubators for antibiotic resistance, physicians actually do their best to try to get their patient out of there as fast as humanly possible, and sometimes this means sending people home with home nursing to get their 14 or 21 or 28 day course of vancomycin instead of sitting around on the ward letting their bacteria exchange plasmids with the bacteria on the other patients, in the walls, crawling all over the equipment, and (probably in the highest concentrations) in the computer keyboards that the hospital staff use.
But the biggest lesson: don't rely on antibiotics to kill virulent bacteria. The best defense is washing your hands frequently.
Nature article: antibiotic may never be used (Score:5, Insightful)
An article in the most recent issue of Nature discusses this new antibiotic in more detail - the process by which it was discovered, its nature etc. The article however ends with a discussion that the chances of this antibiotic making it to the market is pretty low. First of all, it has to be tested to make sure it is stable (this apparently is a concern that has already risen in animal tests of the new antibiotic) and non-toxic to humans. However, even if the technical problems are resolved, financial problems - antibiotics are simply not profitable for pharmaceutical companies - may kill it. The reasons for the financial problems apply to antibiotics in general:
- It is likely that this antibiotic if released into common use will "meet the fate of its predecessors" as bacteria rapidly require resistance to it. So the time span when it will under heavy demand will be short.
- Regulatory hurdles. "the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have clear guidelines for approving new antibiotics" meaning the process is even more long and tedious than for normal drugs.
- Antibiotics are only used for sparingly and only for a week or two.
A quote:
But "the next steps are fraught with danger", warns microbiologist Carl Nathan of Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. "The obstacles are truly formidable."
Re:Nature article: antibiotic may never be used (Score:2)
Furthermore, this substance is just the first of its class. In this age of genetic engineering, it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that s
Re:Nature article: antibiotic may never be used (Score:2)
people who have $100000 to spend with colon cancer = a lot
people whose MRSA infection can't be cured with vancomycin = very limited
it's not difficult to understand, isn't it?
Re:Nature article: antibiotic may never be used (Score:2)
There has been at least one bill in Congress that would have helped: If you bring a new antibiotic type to market, the company would get to:
- extended patent protection on it. IIRC, one proposal was for the patent clock to start ticking at the time it passed FDA approval.
- you could pick any other drug in your patent portfolio and extend it's patent two years
Travel Time (Score:4, Funny)
MRSA is a big deal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every day I would walk by the isolation ward and look in, just to let the kids know that someone was concerned for them. These children already had the odds stacked against them, and to top it off with the fact those who attended to them had to avoid all physical contact cut me to the heart. How sad is it to be a kid who can never be hugged, having to live without anyone touching them?
If someone can isolate and develop an antibiotic that can cure MRSA, I'll be one of the first in line to shake their hand.
Mr. SA Can Suck It (Score:2)
This wasn't some
Re:MRSA is a big deal... (Score:2)
And just how...? (Score:2)
MRSA treatment already exists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:2)
It causes kidneys and ears? On the patient? Eww.
Or do you mean that the bacteria grow ears and kidneys? That would be sort of cool.
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:3, Funny)
Or do you mean that the bacteria grow ears and kidneys? That would be sort of cool.
it's for this reason that it is known as "the mister potato head of the microbial world".
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:2)
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:2)
Re:MRSA treatment already exists (Score:2)
That's not a problem at all... It just keeps idiots from stopping as soon as they feel better, and developing resistant strains.
Plenty of Human Volunteers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Plenty of Human Volunteers (Score:3, Insightful)
The clinical trials process is there to protect people who are so desperate that they will try anything, sign anything, test anything. The alternative is to have a queue of snake-oil peddlers at the door of every dying person--"My pet theory is that weasel saliva contains powerful natural antimicrobials,
Re:Plenty of Human Volunteers (Score:2)
There are plenty of perfectly-good cures out there that aren't "approved" treatments.
I had a fungal nail infection for 2 decades. When I went to a doctor about it, all he did was push Lamosil on me. I wasn't interested in taking a costly pill for 3 months that has been associated with liver damage. One day, I did a little online research and found several home remedies for f
Re:Plenty of Human Volunteers (Score:2)
It's interesting, some of them are "real" drugs too. When a woman is having trouble lactating there are two drugs that are effective. One has mental illness as a side effect. It's FDA approved. The other (domperinone, sp?) doesn't but doesn't have FDA approval. It's been used in Canada and Europe for a couple decades with a fine track record. But at this point's it's gone generic so there's nobody to pay for a clinical
Re:Plenty of Human Volunteers [Count me out] (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of ignorant people are saying "MRSA is no big deal, vancomycin cures it". Well in my case there was no way that a dose of vancomycin strong enough to get MRSA out of my clavicle, scapula and humerus wasn
Another anti-MRSA agent: Mangosteen (Score:5, Interesting)
After learning about this fruit and its many documented benefits, I bought into the company [goxan.net] that brought it to the market in the US.
Re:Another anti-MRSA agent: Mangosteen (new link) (Score:2, Informative)
For more information from PubMed on the mangosteen fruit and its benefits, see these articles at PubMed via NIH.gov [nih.gov]. Or, go to my website [goxan.net].
Re:Another anti-MRSA agent: Mangosteen (Score:2)
After learning about this fruit and its many documented benefits, I bought into the company [goxan.net] that brought it to the market in the US.
At first I thought you might have bought some of their stock, but now I see that you got sucked into their MLM scheme: "This site belongs to Robert & Kinin Taylor, Xango Independent Distributor." (goxan.net)
Re:Another anti-MRSA agent: Mangosteen (Score:3, Funny)
Genetic engineering has gone too far this time. What kind of sicko crossbred a mango with Bruce Springsteen?
Queen Victoria & Mangosteen (Score:2)
She is said to have offered a big sum, or maybe it was a knighthood, to anyone who could invent a method to bring an edible magosteen to England. She had heard about how delicious it was, but wasn't willing to travel to the places where it grows.
Re: (Score:2)
MRSA colonization. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
MRSA is typically resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics, including penicillins and cephalosporins. Just because it's resistant does not mean that it's going to eat away at your flesh. Methicillin sensitive strains will do that just as happily, particularly if they produce leukocidins (eg: MRSA strain USA300).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
Calling vancomycin a cure for MRSA is exceedingly short sighted. VRSA/VISA (the I stands for intermediate, not insensitive), is becoming increasingly common in some regions. Topical agents, such as mupirocin or chlorhexidine may help to attenuate nasal and skin carriage (groin, axilla etc), but reports of MuRSA are also beginning to surface. It's an uphill battle.
My advice? (And yes, I hold a PhD in the field). Avoid contributing to the problem. Don't suck down antibiotics every time you get the sniffles, especially if you don't have to. More importantly, if your doctor insists upon it, don't stop taking the antibiotics the moment you feel better: finish the entire course, as prescribed. Data to associate feedlot/livestock antibiotic supplements and the transmission of resistant pathogens into human populations is scant. Worry first about the factors you can control. Your children will thank you for it.
Vaccinations for Virulence (Score:5, Interesting)
Among these measures is to target virulence rather than the pathogen itself. The reason is that a species of pathogen can have varying virulence and you want the last virulent to win the competition for the ecological niche (human body). Ewald gives an example of a particular protein used by a bacteria to convert human lung tissue to useful food -- a protein that costs the bacteria about 5% of its budget but has huge returns. Vaccinating against this protein can let the more benign variants beat out the virulent variants for the lungs of humans, and give the human immune system the kick it needs to construct antibodies to suppress further infection.
There's another antibiotic also been discovered.. (Score:2)
The BBC report on this several month old story is here! [bbc.co.uk]
So? (Score:4, Funny)
*ducks*
Get a grip, people (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that antibiotics are being badly misused. After about three days on penicillin, with two days to go, you start feeling OK again. Now, at this point, you may be tempted to stop taking the stuff. That is the worst thing you can do. Your immune system has recovered a bit, and is now just about strong enough to fight off the bacteria. However, unless you can be sure that you have killed every last one of the germs, there is still a chance that they might breed. And the ones that survived the onslaught of penicillin are going to pass on the "double-hard bastard" gene to their own offspring. So you need to complete the course, using your own recovered immune system with penicillin as backup, in order to deal with the superbugs.
People failing to finish courses of antibiotics are costing the National Health Service {and by extension the taxpayer} money. In fact, penicillin {or the artificially-manufactured equivalent, Amoxil} isn't used so much anymore because there are resistant strains of so many bacteria. My cruel side thinks it's a shame you can't ROLLBACK a medical treatment and leave people sick if they don't complete the treatment properly
On the other side of the coin, if you keep taking penicillin for too long, your immune system will eventually stop trying so hard {and again you'll be breeding penicillin-resistant bugs}. Plus, the stuff isn't any respector of the essential bacteria in your body. Too many antibiotics passing through your system might even kill some of the essential bacteria in your septic tank, causing it to smell and making you unpopular with the neighbours.
Re:Get a grip, people (Score:2)
I can't stand it. (Score:3, Interesting)
And similar.
In that particular case, I sat the individual down and explained how anti-biotics work and the importance of finishing ALL the medication. He nodded and seemed to understand, and
grape shot (Score:2)
Re:grape shot (Score:2)
Fatal last words.
This is great news, but... (Score:2)
Re:This is great news, but... (Score:2)
Which is exactly why we should revamp the patent system. If the government didn't allow the prices on these fashionable drugs to be overinflated there would be lower margins. Eliminating excessive patent terms, renewals and new patents granted on minimal changes would force pharmaceutical companies to search for new profitable products rather than capitalizing and advertising the latest Viagra type dr
Links (Score:4, Informative)
"Vancomycin and teicoplanin are glycopeptide antibiotics used to treat MRSA infections."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin [wikipedia.org]
Plus you get some free karma for doing it. Always works!
Re:Links (Score:2)
Re:Links (Score:2)
If people want to do further reading on the topic, Wikipedia is also a great starting point for some useful links. I have often followed a Wikipedia link from here and ended up following links to other pages.
Google is good too. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Re:A cure you say? (Score:2)
Re:A cure you say? (Score:2, Informative)
and as with most things in nature, if it can, it will... (or someone will do it for it...)
Re:A cure you say? (Score:2)
Re:A cure you say? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A cure you say? (Score:2, Funny)
For people with chronic lung disease, like cystic fibrosis [wikipedia.org], who experience repeated pneumonias and infection with the like of MRSA and Pseudomonas aeruginosa [wikipedia.org], the addition of another antibiotic to the team of vanco and linezolid [wikipedia.org] can literally be a life s
Re:No need. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No need. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No need. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No need. (Score:2)
Some drugs do get shortcutted through the trials phases faster than others. These are usually the class of drugs where the drug may possibly kill you or injure you
Re:sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Trust Merck? (Score:2)