Oh for those shiny days of the far-off 1960s, when all those brightly coloured plastics were new, and somehow modern. Your model of Thunderbird 2 was made of it. So were the seats in your dad’s new Austin 1100. So were bottles of fabric conditioner, drinking mugs and clothes of nylon. No more fuddy duddy old wood and cotton for us! This was the Space Age, and we even listened to David Bowie’s Space Oddity on a plastic record.

Except there was a catch. All this new plastic which was slowly filling up the world would one day break down into tiny indigestible particles. With no where else to go except into our blood, our brains, our tissues. So far so bad, but it gets worse. LSS started out as antibiotics blog, and this is where we close the circle. Read this: It’s from the admirable Science News website, a cornucopia of knowledge on many subjects

An international research team has investigated how nanoplastic particles deposited in the body affect the effectiveness of antibiotics. The study showed that the plastic particles not only impair the effect of the drugs, but could also promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.I

So what’s going on? Firstly, can we say how much we liked the simplicity of this study. It used a common antibiotic (tetracycline) and and some common as muck plastics (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) It looks as if microparticles of these things can bind antibiotics, which leads to both the reduction of effectiveness and the generation of new resistance. But read the paper and judge for yourselves, good readers.

And our thoughts? Well they’re more emotions really. A kind of vague melancholy at how progress in one area slow creeps up and vitiates progress in another. That Rachel Carson was right all along. And that all that glistens isn’t good.

[1]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/10/241030150657.htm

#plastic #nanoparticles #antibiotic resistance #pollution #health #medicine

OK, we have spent the past four years urging you to hunt down those pesky little microbes with every antibiotic you can lay your hand on. Now we’re going to tell you microbes are just wonderful. When it comes to saving us from Global Warming that is Read this piece called Microbes against climate catastrophe from Nature Briefings

When we ran this one through the editorial board, we agreed we could not be accused of mixed messaging. Antibiotics are in the medicines file. Carbon capture is in environment. They are two completely separate disconnected entities, like the utterances of certain well-known US politicians and the observable truth. But: are they? After we finished the meeting, and before putting quill to parchment, as t’were, we went for an uneasy walk with our conscience. Up and down the bleak streets of Croydon. Past Fairfield Halls. Something was niggling at the back of our mind. In the Porter for a quick three or four pints. What was it about antibiotics? Round the shopping centre. Something extra about antibiotics. Back past fairfield Halls. People were starting to look Then it hit us! All these excess antibiotics, running off farms and so on may actually be damaging the very microbes which we need to save us. Read this extract of an abstract if you don’t believe us, from the accomplished Professors Yaozong Cui, Yanhong Li Lihao Zhang and Nan Ziao Environmental behaviour and impact of antibiotics [1]

Antibiotics are widely used to treat or prevent human and animal diseases, as well as to promote the growth of animals in livestock breeding and aquaculture. As a type of antibacterial drugs, antibiotics have been widely applied in human/animal disease prevention, disease treatment, animal husbandry and aquaculture, etc. A majority of antibiotics introduced into human/animal cannot be utilized directly, leading to the result that more than 85% antibiotics were discharged into the environment. Once antibiotics enter the ecosystems, they could influence the evolution of the community structure, which according affect the ecological function of aquatic environment. Correspondingly, antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) have been found, which is threatening ecological safety and human health. 

Perhaps the best take on this is from the world-weary Professor Peixoto. We need-and urgently- a very deep understanding of how we live and manage the whole microbiological biome. But where do our rulers spend our money?

[1]https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iceesd-17/25875046

#global warming #climate change #biofuels #carbon capture #microbiology

Old hands on the LSS blog may be forgiven for thinking antibiotic resistance is all about bacteria, and that it all goes in in hospital with lots of medical folk in white coats and humming machines that do funny things with graphs, and all that sort of thing.

Well, it’s about a lot more than that. It isn’t just bacteria that are resistant to our drugs. Down on the farm, there’s a whole class of creatures called Playtyhelminths (aka flatworms) that can do untold damage to sheep, for example. For years their ravages have been controlled by drugs. Now theses pesky creatures are showing strong resistance to these drugs, And to make matters worse, these drugs are getting into nature from the sheep pastures, and starting to wreak havoc there. It’s a lose-lose situation. And we, that is to say humanity, are the losers.[1]

Why is this happening? It’s Natural Selection in action. The flatworms in the sheep guts are animals like any other. Expose them to a threat, (antagonistic drugs) and most will die. But a very few will carry resistant genes, thrown up by random mutation. They and their offspring will survive, and multiply. Mightily. Just like all those bacteria do with the drugs we send against them. The point is resistance is just an evolutionary response. It will happen everywhere at all times. The trick is to stay ahead of it. And the way to do that is to spend a little more on science and research labs. To plan to educate more people with the scientific habit of mind, where we suspend judgement and become open to evidence. And listen a little less to the kind of unreasoning. emotion driven story telling that pollutes so much of the Information Sphere. Some hope.

CREDIT We got this story by watching an episode of the popular BBC television programme Countryfile. [2] Not quite our normal cup of tea, you might think? Well, its amazing how their light, cheerful style gives you an in to some much deeper issues. Worth the odd watch, we say.

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45027-2

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002398g

#flatworms #sheep #agriculture #platyhelminths #antibiotic resistance

As if the threat from cancer, dementia and heart disease wasn’t enough, the world’s older inhabitants face a new danger. It’s our old friend antibiotic resistance-and it’s growing fast. That’s according to Kat Lay of the Guardian,[1] who has produced a fascinating review of the work of the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project.[2.3} They looked at data from 204 countries from 1990 to 2021, and have projected their findings forwards into the 2050s.

Young people will suffer from the problem it’s true. But their overall death rate from infections has been falling, partly from the success of things like improved hygiene and vaccination problems. It’s among the elderly that the situation gets bleak. Their death rates from antibiotic resistant organisms have skyrocketed by 80% over the last three decades. The authors estiamte by 2050 this demographic will be suffering 1.3 million deaths per year directly from resistant organism infections. And the resistance will be implicated, at least in part in a further 8.2 million annual deaths. Readers of LSS will observe, wearily, that every one of them will be avoidable.

So, what to say after all these years of blogging? After reporting on the work of so many fine researchers, and thanking so many fine journalists like Kat, and all her colleagues who labour tirelessly to keep this problem on the public eye? The fact that people are more aware of all this than when we started back in ’15 is something. And there have been signs of progress, as we have sometimes noted here. Keep people aware, readers. If you see a journalist who has raised it, try to find a way to thank them. Keep giving money to the charities who are trying to do something about it.[4] And, as with many things-don’t stop hoping

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/sep/16/health-superbugs-antimicrobial-resistance-amr-39m-deaths-infections-bacteria-gram-study

[2]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01867-1/fulltext

[3]https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/gram

[4]https://www.antibioticresearch.org.uk/

#antibiotic resistance #medicine #health #hospital #2050

Just when you thought we were finally getting a handle on antibiotic resistant microbes, Damien Carrington of the Guardian[1] reveals a whole new, and rather surprising new danger. Antibiotic resistant organisms are not only thriving in agriculture, they are being blown across the planet by the winds. Ready to drop into an ecosystem near you. And start to spread their mischief once again.

That at least seems to be the conclusion of the versatile Professor Rodó and his colleagues at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. Sampling the low air wind patterns (0.97-3.05km) between North China and Japan they found that potentially pathogenic, antibiotic-resistant organisms were blowing up to 2000 km downwind. And landed perfectly capable of reproducing at the other end. To make matters worse, the samples included organisms such as E Coli and Clostridium difficile, no strangers to these pages.

Why are we worried? Well, frankly we didn’t see this coming. Although given the massive misuse of antibiotics in intensive farming, maybe we should have done. And, if this is the situation between advanced countries like China and Japan, what must be happening in less fortunate regions of the world? One thing is clear. Antibiotic resistance joins global warming and mass migration as one of those problems which no country will ever solve on its own. Remeber that next time you hear them banging on in the bar of the Dog and Duck.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/09/pathogenic-microbes-carried-vast-distances-by-winds

[2]https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404191121

#weather #antibiotic resistance #farming #china #japan #prevailing wind #global warming

One of the scourges of modern medicine is the over-prescription of antibiotics. The more they are used, the more chances are made for target organisms to develop resistance. ( as well as other bacteria that live alongside them) Hence the current crisis. Everyone agrees we should be saving our last antibiotics for when they are really, really needed, not just throwing them at every random infection presented in the Doctor’s surgery on a rainy Monday morning.

A typical example is infections of the urinary tract, as James Gallagher explains for the BBC. [1] It’s never easy to know whether one of these is bacterial or viral. And currently it can take three days to find out. Yet the risk of an untreated bacterial infection is so high, the consequences so grave, that Doctors have to prescribe antibiotics, just in case. Of course, if it turns out to be viral. the antibiotics are useless, and the risk of adding more resistant bacteria to the ecosystem has just been ratcheted up again.. If only there was a way of cutting diagnostic time!

Well some Swedish researchers seem to have done just that. Their new test seems to have cut the time to answer the question “is this an antibiotic-treatable infection?” down to 45 minutes. James waxes lyrical, with the aid of some excellent graphics. Even more encouraging, the system is now being marketed by a pioneering firm called Sysmex Astrego [2] which suggests a strongly robust, repeatable test which could be rolled out in the millions. Billions, even? There’s lots of good news here, and we hope that all involved enjoy their Longitude Prize. If anyone deserves a little celebration, it is surely they.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crggj9led0no

[2]https://www.sysmex-astrego.se/

#antibiotic resistance #medicine #bacteria fungi virus #superbug

We have always hoped that AI would do for antibiotics what it has already done for protein design. (LSS 1 12 20; 26 3 23) Now there is a real possibility that these hopes may come true. Eric Berger of the Guardian covers a truly remarkable set of research by Professor de la Fuente and his team at the University pf Pennsylvania. [1] They have used an algorithm to mine vast sets of data to sieve out any compounds with potential anti microbial properties. As any reader will know, it would have taken years, if not decades, if they had just used teams of scientists in labs. Click on to Eric’s article, its very easy on the eye. But we’ll leave you with these thoughts:

Is this a game changer? Potentially, yes. It could allow the construction of a vast library of potential antibiotic compounds. The real problem of the last forty years has been, not just the steady failure of existing antibiotics, but the lack of a stream of potential replacements as resistance builds up. But we see a deeper lesson, good for all science. There is nothing so cooperative, so international, as a library or a database. Its contents cut across divisions of nationality, race, class, time even. If we are to survive the antibiotics crisis, and many other looming threats, we will need this approach more. Something to think about when some journalist or politician turns a group of people into “others”. Maybe we can learn something from them, instead.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/05/ai-antibiotic-resistance

#antibiotics #AI #microbiology #research #database

One of our stated purposes at LSS is to scan the media feeds, both news and scientific, to bring you the best possible stories on the continuing crisis caused by antibiotic resistant micro-organisms. That’s superbugs in short. And one journalist whose work we have featured time and again is the indefatigable Nicola Davis who writes for the Guardian. Well today she has done it again, in an intriguing new take. It’s going to take quite some time before new drugs can be tested and made ready. Meanwhile people are starting to die, in quite large numbers. What can we do? [1]

Well, quite a lot according to Nicola. Like a good journalist, she starts by reprising how truly awful the current situation is. The figures are eyewatering. To take 2019 as a good pre COVID baseline, antibiotic resistant microorganisms were implicated in 4.95 million deaths, with a definite attribution possible in 1.27 million cases. So are we just going to wait, to sit around and wring our hands until new antibiotics come along? No, quite a lot is possible in the meantime, Citing the work of Professor Laxminarayan of Princeton, she writes:

……………AMR-associated deaths in LMICs could be cut by 18%, equivalent to about 750,000 a year, through three key steps……..The team team suggests an estimated 247,800 deaths are preventable through universal access to clean water and improved sanitation and hygiene, while 337,000 deaths could be prevented through better infection prevention and control in healthcare settings…….Another 181,500 deaths are preventable by means of childhood vaccinations,

But Nicola’s article, and the link she provides to The Lancet, are far more detailed [2]

An our thoughts? After so many years bashing you on your heads, gentle readers, we see actual grounds for optimism First journalists like Nicola are getting on to this.( See also MD of Private Eye and Stacey Liberatore of the Mail) Secondly, there’s nothing so likely to wither effort as the thought that we are powerless. Beyond hope. Passive. And as this article shows, nothing could be further from the truth.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/23/huge-number-of-deaths-linked-to-superbugs-can-be-avoided-say-experts

[2]https://www.thelancet.com/series/antibiotic-resistance

#superbugs #antibiotic resistance #pandemic #health #vaccination #sanitation #preventive medicine #nicola davis #md private eye #stacey liberatore