5 ms·
Urinary tract infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics
- jseliger 7y agoThat the failing power of antibiotics is not a major national political issue says very bad things about our society.
- arkades 7y ago<s> Didn't you read the other front page article on HN today? Modern medicine is useless anyway. </s>
- splittingTimes 7y agoSaw it, but cannot find it again. Search doesn't show it and I checked the first 250 stories. It's not there. Did it get deleted? Do you have the hn link?
- arkades 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434325 It's a puff piece for Stegenga's new book.
- Something1234 7y ago> Stegenga's Who is this?
- natrik 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20434325
- _red 7y agoThere is a certain disconnect between "warning about antibiotic overuse" and ignoring that the same selection pressures are exerted by vaccine use.
- stallmanite 7y agoGot any citations on that? I’ve never heard of pathogens evolving around vaccines.
- arkades 7y agoBecause vaccination creates a series of various antibodies that are not identical from person to person, and often target highly invariant portions of a target microbe. The GP just conflated two wildly different things. A citation is not likely forthcoming.
- stallmanite 7y agoThanks. My bullshitometer was going off but I’m not a biologist.
- perl4ever 7y agoI have no idea, but I Googled "pathogens evolving around vaccines" and got a couple of interesting hits. Here is an article about how vaccines cause evolutionary pressure: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathogens-to-evolve-20180510/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog... And here is a paper about how they mostly don't: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6304978/ I feel like it's weird that people say something exists and then other people say no it doesn't without ever typing it in to Google. If you are that uninterested in the topic, why even post? Surely you can't reassure yourself about your knowledge that way.
- stallmanite 7y agoI did google it. I wanted to know what this guy would say about it. Don’t be an asshole Edit: Thanks for digging up references though. And I do feel the same way about people asking questions when they’re too lazy to search. In this case I had reasons to do so.
- weiming 7y agoTIL that one of the drugs mentioned in the article has a side effect of rupturing tendons. [1] [1] https://www.webmd.com/osteoarthritis/news/20080708/fda-warning-cipro-may-rupture-tendons https://www.webmd.com/osteoarthritis/news/20080708/fda-warni...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arkades 7y agoThat's an interesting hypothesis, but man, that's a seriously garbage paper. It's borderline satire. It repeatedly comes back to an argument along the lines of: "Drug has side effect X. X is not inconsistent with disrupted metabolism." Well, shit, very few things are outright inconsistent with disrupted metabolism, unless you've 100% nailed down an alternative mechanism for the side effect.
- ryanworl 7y agoMy mother spoke at the meeting preceding the FDA [1] requiring a black-box warning be added to that class of antibiotics. Rupturing tendons is bad, but it gets a lot worse than that. She suffered life-altering symptoms which ended her career of 25 years in insurance sales. The drug is routinely prescribed and dispensed without patients being warned of these symptoms. Just a few months ago, she was at a pharmacy and overheard the drug being dispensed and asked the pharmacist why she didn’t warn the person who received it about the possible reactions. It apparently takes too much time to tell them, according to that pharmacist. [1]: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-drug-safety-communication-fda-updates-warnings-oral-and-injectable-fluoroquinolone-antibiotics https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-d...
- throwaway3627 7y agoMy grandmother received an antibiotic that made her virtually deaf (ototoxicity of an aminoglycoside).
- adav 7y agoMy partner is particularly prone to UTIs. In the UK, people in her position are given a virtually endless stream of antibiotics. Often doctors end up recommending taking a small dose every time after sex. No wonder resistance is increasing! After a lot of research and self-testing, we came across D-Mannose and had an idea [1] to help others in a similar position. We were very excited to be able to help reduce peoples’ recurrent pain and to decrease overall antibiotic use. Unfortunately it hasn’t been popular as of yet. Any feedback would be appreciated! [1] https://chickpea.care https://chickpea.care
- amatecha 7y agoD-mannose is surprisingly effective.
- kaybe 7y agoWow, that's not cheap (normal price of £32 per month, currently on offer for £24 per month). Is there support from the healthcare system or do you have to pay everything yourselves?
- alkonaut 7y agoA lot of people with chronic conditions are on constant small dose antibiotics. I have a daughter that contracts pneumonia from every little common cold. She’s on small-dose antibiotics every day now with good results. Her doctors say a very good reason to keep the use of antibiotics down in the general population is just because those people would be extra vulnerable to resistant bacteria. Doctors here have effectively stopped prescribing antibiotics for things they prescribed it for almost always just a few years ago, such as regular tonsillitis. That’s the sort of thing that helps. Obviously a total ban on antibiotics in healthy livestock that the EU adopted is even more important. I wish we could see that in China/India soon.
- random_comment 7y agoHave you looked into the effects of zinc supplementation of common cold frequency and severity? I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, etc. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/expert-answers/zinc-for-colds/faq-20057769 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/e...
- duxup 7y agoI worry that doctors are still WAY too prone to prescribe antibiotics. I take my kids in as they've got respiratory issues that when they get the flu heir airway starts to narrow. A steroid fixes that just fine. But man most doctors will still offer an antibiotic too ... like dude, I know that won't help, it's a virus...
- faissaloo 7y agoWhy on earth would they prescribe antibiotics for a virus? They don't seem very competent
- rscho 7y agoAnd you don't seem like you have any clue about this topic. There are guidelines for that. Professionals (even incompetent ones) do follow them, based on academic research.
- duxup 7y agoI suspect because people who come in want... something. I just pass on them.
- prostoalex 7y agoWhat we've been told is that during the virus phase the child's immune system becomes so weak, that it's prone to develop a bunch of infections (most common being every toddler's favorite - ear infection), and that the pattern was so common that they would write a prescription as a preventative measure.
- throwaway3627 7y agoIIRC c. auris is sometimes a culprit. And now that there's mycotic-resistant strains and very few antimycotic drug classes, it's not a good trend. We need more antimycotic drug classes.
- rectang 7y agoThose citrus farmers in Florida are fine with it: > "Citrus Farmers Facing Deadly Bacteria Turn to Antibiotics (nytimes.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945233
- drchewbacca 7y agoThe tragedy of the commons strikes again. Luckily there's bacteriophages waiting in the wings.
- fiatjaf 7y ago"depending on a person’s insurance, getting a culture can be expensive." How is this possible? I live in a country not famous for its low cost health treatments, but I paid the equivalent of $6 (six dollars) for an urine culture just some days ago, and it was a full price paid to a private company, no insurance, no subsidy. How much can a culture cost in the US?
- babyslothzoo 7y agoAntibiotic resistant is a huge problem that is only going to keep growing. Unfortunately very few new drugs are in the pipeline because they aren't particularly profitable to develop.
- ycombonator 7y agoAntibiotics are available without prescription in countries like India. Not to blame the people who purchase and take them because the government provided care is a total failure and they can’t afford private care. Even the private doctors prescribe antibiotics even for minor viruses without tests. So no wonder common bacteria are evolving into resistant strains.