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But how long is that going to take? Resistance has very high fitness in the presence of humans using antibiotics (avoiding death); resistance has very small neg

by aab0 10y ago

But how long is that going to take? Resistance has very high fitness in the presence of humans using antibiotics (avoiding death); resistance has very small negative fitness in the absence of humans using antibiotics (saving a tiny bit on metabolism). However long it took to evolve resistance, it'll take many times longer to de-evolve it. And given randomness, a tremendous number of copies of the resistance genes will hang around anyway so the resistance will come back even faster the second time.

riffraff 10y ago
I imagine antibiotic resistance is not just an on/off switch in a vacuum, i.e. a different chemical surface might interact differently with a drug but also have some adverse effect, so losing the resistance would be advantageous.
fweespeech 10y ago
http://articles.courant.com/2011-01-11/health/hc-weir-antibiotic-yale-0112-20110111_1_antimicrobial-chemotherapy-antibiotics-edward-septimus http://articles.courant.com/2011-01-11/health/hc-weir-antibi... Too long. You can get significant mileage out of a 3 year ban but resistance will return very quickly afterwards. You'd need to wait decades to truly reset the clock. > After three years of banning the use of that antibiotic, the resistance of the bacteria dropped significantly. But because there were resisitant strains that persisted right through the end of the study in 2008, it was likely that the resistance would surge once again if the antibiotic were reintroduced. To safely reintroduce the antibiotic, Townsend said, you have to kill off all the pathogens. > Considering how important antibiotics have become to human health — from the treatment of strep throat to MRSA to tuberculosis — Townsend says a 45-year ban on most antibiotics would be impractical. Doctors estimate it takes about that long for the resistance to disappear.

by aab0 10y ago

riffraff 10y ago

I imagine antibiotic resistance is not just an on/off switch in a vacuum, i.e. a different chemical surface might interact differently with a drug but also have some adverse effect, so losing the resistance would be advantageous.

fweespeech 10y ago

http://articles.courant.com/2011-01-11/health/hc-weir-antibiotic-yale-0112-20110111_1_antimicrobial-chemotherapy-antibiotics-edward-septimus http://articles.courant.com/2011-01-11/health/hc-weir-antibi... Too long. You can get significant mileage out of a 3 year ban but resistance will return very quickly afterwards. You'd need to wait decades to truly reset the clock. > After three years of banning the use of that antibiotic, the resistance of the bacteria dropped significantly. But because there were resisitant strains that persisted right through the end of the study in 2008, it was likely that the resistance would surge once again if the antibiotic were reintroduced. To safely reintroduce the antibiotic, Townsend said, you have to kill off all the pathogens. > Considering how important antibiotics have become to human health — from the treatment of strep throat to MRSA to tuberculosis — Townsend says a 45-year ban on most antibiotics would be impractical. Doctors estimate it takes about that long for the resistance to disappear.