4 ms·

I Was going to downvote but I’ll respond instead. These people have legimate medical needs for this antibiotic so this isn’t a case where we’d want to withhold

I Was going to downvote but I’ll respond instead. These people have legimate medical needs for this antibiotic so this isn’t a case where we’d want to withhold it. We’re better off spending our resources discovering new antibiotics instead of neggling who’s deserving of what.

throwaway5752 9y ago
Hashimoto's is awful, but it can also be treated with an oral form of the thyroid hormones to restore appropriate levels (levothyroxine as the original poster mentioned earlier). I believe this is completely effective (I don't know if the underlying condition still causes an uncomfortable/visible goiter). It's generally not fatal when treated. I'm sure you know that bacteria don't have to do traditional reproduction to exchange genetic material so they can pass along traits like antibiotic resistance very rapidly. It can also spread between different species of bacteria (see plasmids, bacterial conjugation/transformation). So this is why I'm against using antibiotics for non-life saving applications, generally. You have widely drug resistant staph (eg, MRSA), e. coli, chlamydia, tuberculosis (XDR TB), et al. causing massive problems in healthcare systems across the world and killing quite a few people. I am not sure if you know this, but given the absence of the selection pressure, bacterial populations can lose drug resistance. It has higher ongoing metabolic requirements to have that trait, and is a evolutionary disadvantage. Also, I don't know if you appreciate the difficulty to find new antibiotics (particularly wide-spectrum and low side-effects/toxicity). I would encourage you to research that topic carefully because it's a subject with a lot of poor information written about it. Finally, I will underscore that I took my own advice, and found multiple papers hosted by the NIH about emergence of drug resistance in patients using very low dose doxy (not in Hashimoto's, but rosacea, where its non-antibiotic properties are also useful, though I'm not sure it's the same mechanism). So I was wrong, it seems. I learned something new in the process of researching my response.
- fest 9y ago
  Hashimoto's relatively easy to live with (at least, compared to other autoimmune conditions). If properly medicated with replacement hormones, no observable change in life expectancy. If goiter forms (which is a complication of undiagnosed/under-treated Hashimoto's), it's solvable by surgery.
fest 9y ago
It may very well be that either: these people think they have a legitimate need for the antibiotic or it is helping for a narrow portion of population. The problem is, people without medical background cannot really evaluate if a treatment recommended by random blog is worth it, in terms of possible risk-reward. This can lead to all sorts of social phenomena, of which the most visible is anti-vaccination movement.

throwaway5752 9y ago

Hashimoto's is awful, but it can also be treated with an oral form of the thyroid hormones to restore appropriate levels (levothyroxine as the original poster mentioned earlier). I believe this is completely effective (I don't know if the underlying condition still causes an uncomfortable/visible goiter). It's generally not fatal when treated. I'm sure you know that bacteria don't have to do traditional reproduction to exchange genetic material so they can pass along traits like antibiotic resistance very rapidly. It can also spread between different species of bacteria (see plasmids, bacterial conjugation/transformation). So this is why I'm against using antibiotics for non-life saving applications, generally. You have widely drug resistant staph (eg, MRSA), e. coli, chlamydia, tuberculosis (XDR TB), et al. causing massive problems in healthcare systems across the world and killing quite a few people. I am not sure if you know this, but given the absence of the selection pressure, bacterial populations can lose drug resistance. It has higher ongoing metabolic requirements to have that trait, and is a evolutionary disadvantage. Also, I don't know if you appreciate the difficulty to find new antibiotics (particularly wide-spectrum and low side-effects/toxicity). I would encourage you to research that topic carefully because it's a subject with a lot of poor information written about it. Finally, I will underscore that I took my own advice, and found multiple papers hosted by the NIH about emergence of drug resistance in patients using very low dose doxy (not in Hashimoto's, but rosacea, where its non-antibiotic properties are also useful, though I'm not sure it's the same mechanism). So I was wrong, it seems. I learned something new in the process of researching my response.

fest 9y ago
Hashimoto's relatively easy to live with (at least, compared to other autoimmune conditions). If properly medicated with replacement hormones, no observable change in life expectancy. If goiter forms (which is a complication of undiagnosed/under-treated Hashimoto's), it's solvable by surgery.

fest 9y ago

It may very well be that either: these people think they have a legitimate need for the antibiotic or it is helping for a narrow portion of population. The problem is, people without medical background cannot really evaluate if a treatment recommended by random blog is worth it, in terms of possible risk-reward. This can lead to all sorts of social phenomena, of which the most visible is anti-vaccination movement.