4 ms·

Googling the 5 known antibiotics comes back >There are actually dozens of individual medicines and more than ten major classes of antibiotics used to treat bac

by tim333 2mo ago

Googling the 5 known antibiotics comes back >There are actually dozens of individual medicines and more than ten major classes of antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections—not just five

spwa4 2mo ago
I went to chatGPT to get what the fuck you mean (just in case saving money meant the government isn't giving me or my colleagues access at all to some antibiotics). But sadly it's not that. It's a correct answer, just totally disregarding resistance. In order to arrive at 10 classes, ChatGPT is naming classes that are defeated, like Penicillin. I didn't consider or count antibiotics that became completely useless before 1980 or so (because other than historical and research interest, what's the point? Nobody's going to make penicillin effective again) and then 5 is very much the correct count. So yes, counting useless antibiotics (useless in curing humans, not necessarily useless in research or other procedures like making custom antibodies), there are 10 classes (although if you're going there, why not go further than 10? But whatever) So let's classify ChatGPT's suggestions: 1) Fully defeated by Bacteria: penicillins, macrolides, fluoroquinolones (yes, very occasionally there will be something these do still work against, however no sane physician will "trust" these, and nobody outside of research bothers testing anything against them) 2) Mostly defeated: carbapenems, cephalosporins, and vancomycin. If you know what you're dealing with these can be used, but if even slightly in doubt what bacterium it is, we do not go here. Without a lab test confirming that what's ailing the patient responds to these (positive confirmation needed), do not use. This also means they're not useful in emergencies. 3) Useful ... except: tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, "combinations", Daptomycin (and lipopeptides in general), oxazolidinones. These can be used "by default". These are "the 5" that we're talking about. And yes, I got updated, until 2024 there was no known resistance to Daptomycin (which is an "updated" version of Vancomycin in some ways). There now are known resistant strains against all of them, which means we've actually climbed one more rung on the ladder. Current state: for every antibiotic we know there is a disease that just totally ignores that antibiotic. However we are not yet in the state that one disease is immune against everything (although there are MRSA strains that are highly resistant to 4 out of 5, in India, and frankly, probably in China, except they're lying about it. These strains are also active in Pakistan and probably Afghanistan and Iran except nobody really knows for sure)

by tim333 2mo ago

Googling the 5 known antibiotics comes back >There are actually dozens of individual medicines and more than ten major classes of antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections—not just five

spwa4 2mo ago

I went to chatGPT to get what the fuck you mean (just in case saving money meant the government isn't giving me or my colleagues access at all to some antibiotics). But sadly it's not that. It's a correct answer, just totally disregarding resistance. In order to arrive at 10 classes, ChatGPT is naming classes that are defeated, like Penicillin. I didn't consider or count antibiotics that became completely useless before 1980 or so (because other than historical and research interest, what's the point? Nobody's going to make penicillin effective again) and then 5 is very much the correct count. So yes, counting useless antibiotics (useless in curing humans, not necessarily useless in research or other procedures like making custom antibodies), there are 10 classes (although if you're going there, why not go further than 10? But whatever) So let's classify ChatGPT's suggestions: 1) Fully defeated by Bacteria: penicillins, macrolides, fluoroquinolones (yes, very occasionally there will be something these do still work against, however no sane physician will "trust" these, and nobody outside of research bothers testing anything against them) 2) Mostly defeated: carbapenems, cephalosporins, and vancomycin. If you know what you're dealing with these can be used, but if even slightly in doubt what bacterium it is, we do not go here. Without a lab test confirming that what's ailing the patient responds to these (positive confirmation needed), do not use. This also means they're not useful in emergencies. 3) Useful ... except: tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, "combinations", Daptomycin (and lipopeptides in general), oxazolidinones. These can be used "by default". These are "the 5" that we're talking about. And yes, I got updated, until 2024 there was no known resistance to Daptomycin (which is an "updated" version of Vancomycin in some ways). There now are known resistant strains against all of them, which means we've actually climbed one more rung on the ladder. Current state: for every antibiotic we know there is a disease that just totally ignores that antibiotic. However we are not yet in the state that one disease is immune against everything (although there are MRSA strains that are highly resistant to 4 out of 5, in India, and frankly, probably in China, except they're lying about it. These strains are also active in Pakistan and probably Afghanistan and Iran except nobody really knows for sure)