Search results matching tag 'antibiotics'

Re: reflux following antibiotic therapy

sangita.sinha11 — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:19:35 GMT

yeah, you are right. I have seen most of the patients who came to me for their GI problems had history of allopathic antibiotics.

My back phages

jowddty — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:18:00 GMT

Pity the poor general practitioner. He doesn’t have the tools for the heroic gesture, unlike his counterpart in emergency medicine who saves lives, patches people up and generally performs miracles on a daily basis. The general practitioner deals with the chronic problems, those persistent health issues that never get better. All he can offer are drugs to make the patient comfortable, less aware of his symptoms perhaps—but the underlying problem doesn’t go away. No heroics there.

That’s all true—except for one class of drugs that’s been available to the doctor for the past 60 years. The antibiotics have made a hero of the general practitioner. With these wonder drugs, the doctor has made health problems go away, and with a scribble on his prescription pad, he’s been able to write off disease.

No wonder, then, that he has just kept on writing out those prescriptions. Got a sore throat? Try an antibiotic. Your child has an ear infection? Take some penicillin. Got a cold, a fever, or a cough? Well, have some methicillin, just in case.

This overuse, or abuse, of medicine’s greatest triumph has its consequences—the superbug, which is resistant to antibiotics. As our cover story reveals, we have developed, through our own stupidity, the ultimate superbug—one that creates superbugs out of any bug, and is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics.

Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin by accident in 1928, predicted this day would come. He knew that his discovery was a frozen moment in time of an evolutionary process that had been waged for billions of years. When he looked down his microscope, a fungus had the upper hand over the bugs. Had he left it for 50 years, the bugs might have demolished the fungus.

At around the same time—in Russia—a scientist had also made an accidental discovery, and one that showed similar promise. George Eliava discovered that certain viruses could kill bacteria. As he delved deeper, he found that each deadly bug has its unique viral nemesis. The virus closes in on that bug alone and destroys it.

These viruses are called ‘bacteriophages’ (literally, ‘bacteria killers’), and they form the basis of phage therapy, which has been neglected for the past 30 years. It has a number of advantages over antibiotics, but the major one is that it harnesses natural processes. The virus is alive and adapts as quickly as its bacterial prey, so—in phage therapy—there can never be a superbug or, at least, not for long.

Man, or the general practitioner, may be smart. But Nature is smarter.

Should we execute our drug watchdogs?

bshubbard — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:46:00 GMT

The Chinese have given us many things over the years. There's wall building, the recipe for chop suey, and those neat jackets without collars.

Now they're teaching us how to treat our drug regulators.

The Chinese authorities have decided to execute Zheng Xiaoyu, the head of their food and drug agency, after he accepted bribes from drug companies to speed through the licensing of their products. One antibiotic approved by Zheng's agency killed 10 people last year, and there were 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005.

Zheng was found guilty by a Beijing court of putting his and his family's welfare ahead of that of the population by accepting the bribes, which amounted to 6.5 yuan ($848,000 or £433,000). He was appointed as the first director of China's food and drug administration in 1998 following a career as a pharmaceutical company executive.

Commentators see the extreme measure as window dressing in order to restore confidence in China's exports. Petfood shipped to the States recently was contaminated with melamine, a chemical used in industrial glues, fire retardants and fertilisers. As a result, it killed a dozen or so family pets, and the chemical found its way into the food chain, affecting around 3 million chickens that were sold in stores across the USA.

Zheng's misdemeanours are as nothing compared to our drug regulators,.of course, whose main quest seems to be to release dangerous and unproven drugs onto the market while accepting funding from the pharmaceutical industry.

We reckon a public hanging or three might make them remember who they're supposed to be working for.

Other Bloggers discussing this:

Typerion: Conviction of China's former FDA chief includes death
Lost Laowai China Blog: The Binge and Purge of Chinese Politics
Health Spectator: And we think we've got it bad!
Richard Spencer, Telegraph.co.uk: A very final sentence
SteveSight: The Ripple Effect