4 ms·

It's great that we may have two new antibiotics! Now, it'd be nice to keep those for as long as possible. Is regulation on the use of these feasible? I'd think

It's great that we may have two new antibiotics! Now, it'd be nice to keep those for as long as possible. Is regulation on the use of these feasible? I'd think that if your law just restricts its use on animals (which I believe is where the majority of antibiotic-resistance comes from) that would be easier to pass than if you tried to restrict its use on humans, but I don't know if there's precedent for it.

nicman23 1y ago
antibios are rotated in and out until wild strains are vulnerable again
- ycombinete 1y ago
  I have never heard about this before. Good news if true. Antibiotics seem to be a bit of a Tragedy of the Commons situation though; my intuition is that people should do this but probably won't.
  - glenstein 1y ago
    It's barely begun to get off the ground and it's by no means solved the issue of antibiotic resistance, but it's a cause for hope. There's other grounds for excitement too, like deriving new antibiotics from naturally occurring microbes (its how the originals were found but then we rode those coattails for decades without searching for new ones). Also phage therapy, CRISPR based strategies, and microbiome management. Not solved, but it makes antibiotic resistance look more like our generations Killer Bees.
  - nicman23 1y ago
    they are banned from being produced country wide so there is no commons
    - ycombinete 1y ago
      I’m not sure what country you are referring to, but the commons in this context is the earth.
      - nicman23 1y ago
        any country. they are rotated almost globally because they do not work anywas.
- malfist 1y ago
  That isn't how it works. Bacteria don't lose resistance over time, that's not how evolution works. A selective pressure was applied to evolve bacteria with resistance, unless there's evolutionarily pressure to lose that evolution, it doesn't get lost
  - glenstein 1y ago
    But there is evolutionary pressure to lose traits over time. Loss of traits over time is fundamental in evolution. Resistance carries fitness and metabolic costs and evolution is always looking to squeeze out certain traits if they're no longer integral to survival. Moles losing eyesight, flightless birds losing fight musculature and hollow bones once they shifted to new strategies, humans losing the ability to synthesize our own vitamin C when we could get it from a diversified diet. There's also now strong documented history of bacteria losing resistances over time hence the rotating strategy. Granted, some resistances are "cheap" to maintain and not lost, or recirculated in the wild and it's not a panacaea (it's more a hypothesized strategy than a realized one and it hasn't solved the issue), but it's by no means a failure to understand evolutionary principles.
  - nicman23 1y ago
    yeah it actually works exactly like that. they do not need to expend the energy to keep being resistant if the solution is to create an anti-antibiotic or the efficiency of the structures that are changed to be resistant usually are less performant than the wild proteins.

nicman23 1y ago

antibios are rotated in and out until wild strains are vulnerable again

ycombinete 1y ago
I have never heard about this before. Good news if true. Antibiotics seem to be a bit of a Tragedy of the Commons situation though; my intuition is that people should do this but probably won't.
- glenstein 1y ago
  It's barely begun to get off the ground and it's by no means solved the issue of antibiotic resistance, but it's a cause for hope. There's other grounds for excitement too, like deriving new antibiotics from naturally occurring microbes (its how the originals were found but then we rode those coattails for decades without searching for new ones). Also phage therapy, CRISPR based strategies, and microbiome management. Not solved, but it makes antibiotic resistance look more like our generations Killer Bees.
- nicman23 1y ago
  they are banned from being produced country wide so there is no commons
  - ycombinete 1y ago
    I’m not sure what country you are referring to, but the commons in this context is the earth.
    - nicman23 1y ago
      any country. they are rotated almost globally because they do not work anywas.
malfist 1y ago
That isn't how it works. Bacteria don't lose resistance over time, that's not how evolution works. A selective pressure was applied to evolve bacteria with resistance, unless there's evolutionarily pressure to lose that evolution, it doesn't get lost
- glenstein 1y ago
  But there is evolutionary pressure to lose traits over time. Loss of traits over time is fundamental in evolution. Resistance carries fitness and metabolic costs and evolution is always looking to squeeze out certain traits if they're no longer integral to survival. Moles losing eyesight, flightless birds losing fight musculature and hollow bones once they shifted to new strategies, humans losing the ability to synthesize our own vitamin C when we could get it from a diversified diet. There's also now strong documented history of bacteria losing resistances over time hence the rotating strategy. Granted, some resistances are "cheap" to maintain and not lost, or recirculated in the wild and it's not a panacaea (it's more a hypothesized strategy than a realized one and it hasn't solved the issue), but it's by no means a failure to understand evolutionary principles.
- nicman23 1y ago
  yeah it actually works exactly like that. they do not need to expend the energy to keep being resistant if the solution is to create an anti-antibiotic or the efficiency of the structures that are changed to be resistant usually are less performant than the wild proteins.