Medical News Of Use

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Threat from superbugs has only increased with time. And it's actually getting so bad now that - as per other news - governments are slowly deciding that some action must be taken and are less relaxed about the timeframe in which this is to be accomplished.





au.ibtimes.com/articles/575077/20141206/apocalypse-superbugs-humanity-mass-death-bacteria-antibiotic.htm

Apocalypse Alert: Scientists Warned of Rising Superbugs that Potentially Could Wipe-out Humanity

By Erik Pineda | December 6, 2014 2:15 PM EST



Apocalypse or the end of days will not come in the form of a nuclear showdown between Russia and the U.S or an alien attack. Extinction of the human race could start anytime soon as scientists point to the alarming rise of superbugs.



Emerging superbugs or smart bacteria that defeats even the most lethal antibiotics could lead to a deadly plague or mass deaths. In such scenario, even the most common infection could kill as the world nears "a post-antibiotic era," according to a report by Business Insider.



And these efficient killers are already upon us.



Wholesale deaths



In the same report, 58,000 of infant deaths in India last year have been blamed to bacterial infections that caught medical doctors by surprise as many of the cases involved health conditions that previously have responded to antibiotics.



But what really scared health officials is that majority of the "of the babies referred to us have multi-drug resistant infections," the report added.



Also in 2013, hundreds of thousands of Americans succumbed to the fatal assault of "nightmare bacteria" that antibiotics failed to neutralise.



Among the diseases that scientists believed have developed strains against antibiotics are the sexually-transmitted gonorrhoea and tuberculosis, the latter initially believed as already extinguished decades ago.



As the bacteria appears to have become smarter, health officials in the United Kingdom warned of dire consequences if the bacteria advancement is not hacked away soon.



Superbugs on a wild rampage will lead to an apocalyptic scenario - humans dying by the thousands or at a much higher rate - a UK official told Business Insider.



Horrible living condition



Unsurprisingly, the rapid spread of bacteria is blamed on subpar living situations in places like the numerous and sprawling slums in India where access to clean water and toilet is close to non-existent. As a result, infectious diseases are common that doctors address by pointing patients to a convenient but dangerous shortcut - the use and abuse of antibiotics.



Needless to say, the tactic makes the patients eventually resistant to antibiotics, leaving them susceptible to the deadlier onslaught of a more potent strain.



Misuse of antibiotics



And the problem is not exclusive to India as the same report pointed to American culpability too. The United States is being blamed for antibiotic use and abuse that in most cases are unnecessary and many other nations do the same.



If the situation continues, humans can only expect the bleakest of possibilities.



One of which is the onset of infection during a routine surgery, say appendectomy, that could prove fatal just because doctors don't have the antibiotic to keep the bacteria at bay, Business Insider said on its report.



That easily could translate to human deaths of apocalyptic proportions.

More curious is what is reduced above to Indian infant mortality "statistics". Other news on India shows that all of a sudden its water and soil are all teeming with superbugs.

Conspiracy theorising at this point isn't baseless paranoia, since the number 1 policy of the west regarding India, Africa, China, and Asia in general is to contain their population sizes. And - as Dhu's posts somewhere on IF had shown - the UN never felt twangs of remorse when the west introduced gender determination of unborn infants and when this directly resulted - as was official western intention - that many female children were aborted in both China and India. That just shows western pretences at mourning over infanticide in India for the playacting it is: when it's exactly what the west wanted and has long encouraged.



Speaking of western pretences at "caring", so was that slumdog movie: the west is seriously afraid of the growing population of India's slums - dark poor peoples eating away the fast diminishing food sources. The west would sterilise India's slums if they could. Oh wait, the west already tried that, again enlisting Indian christo-governmental help, as even recorded in documentaries.





About this from the above report:

Among the diseases that scientists believed have developed strains against antibiotics are the sexually-transmitted gonorrhoea and tuberculosis, the latter initially believed as already extinguished decades ago.

Past time for humanity to stop complacently depending on anti-biotics since it's losing its effectiveness against long-standing mass-killers. Need desperately to devise new treatments for bacteria-induced diseases. The following older news on a treatment for TB seemed promising, though bacteria certainly have an evolutionary advantage and most solutions could end up being merely temporary - like the era of anti-biotics is turning out to be.



newscientist.com/article/dn24848-soupup-your-immune-cells-to-tackle-drugresistant-tb.html

Soup-up your immune cells to tackle drug-resistant TB



19:35 09 January 2014 by Debora MacKenzie



Sixteen people in Belarus have been cured of tuberculosis after having their own immune cells multiplied outside their bodies, and given back to them. Before treatment, their infections resisted many TB drugs, so the approach offers hope that such immune tricks might replace the antibiotics that are losing their power against bacteria. But harnessing the immune system will not be easy.



About a third of the world's population is infected with the TB-causing bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis). Most infections are kept in check by the immune system, but every year active disease develops in 8.6 million people, and 1.3 million people die – a toll for one infection that is second only to HIV.



Since 1990, the spread of TB has slowed, and death rates halved because of antibiotics that, if taken for long enough, kill off the bacteria. But the bacteria are evolving resistance. At any given time, around half a million infections worldwide resist two important TB drugs, and some resist almost every drug we have. Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, a UK health research foundation, singled out drug-resistant TB when he repeated alarms this week about the "apocalyptic" threat of antibiotic resistance.



Calming effect

In theory, heightening the body's own immune defences could be used alongside or even instead of using antibiotics to kill off TB bacteria. The problem is knowing which immune reaction to tweak: some of the body's immune reactions to TB damage and inflame lung tissue more than they fight infection, says Markus Maeurer of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.



However, there are cells in the body that can calm inflammation and boost helpful immune reactions. These mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are stem cells found in bone marrow, and they are already used to treat some autoimmune diseases, so Maeurer wondered whether boosting their production would be beneficial for people with TB.





To find out, his team took MSCs from 30 people with drug-resistant TB in Belarus, one of the countries hardest-hit by resistant TB. They multiplied the MSCs outside the body, then injected them back into their owners' blood.



The procedure caused no ill effects. The participants kept taking their TB medication during and after the trial. Within 18 months, there was no evidence of TB infection in 16 of the 30 people, compared with only five in a similar group of 30 participants that received no MSCs. "We also saw improvements of the lung lesions on X-ray" and in some immune reactions after MSCs treatment, says Maeurer.





Tipping the balance

The trial was designed to assess the safety of boosting people's MSCs rather than the technique's effect on the patients' disease. A larger double-blind, placebo-controlled study is still needed to do that, but Maeurer says the preliminary results are encouraging – especially because those who received MSCs were originally sicker than the group that didn't.



The people's own MSCs damped the inflammation that was paralysing the immune system and damaging the lung, and turned suppressed immune reactions back on, Maeurer says. He is now planning a larger trial.



"I am somewhat sceptical," says Robert Wilkinson of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who wrote a comment that accompanied the report of Maeurer's work this week. "The changes in immune response are very modest indeed." Moreover, even if it works, he says MSC therapy is beyond the capabilities of clinics in countries, such as South Africa, where resistant TB is a problem.



Maeurer counters that multiplying MSCs is a simple procedure – and with full treatment for drug-resistant TB costing $180,000 per patient, the extra cost of using MSCs in combination with existing TB drugs could quickly pay for itself by reducing the time the drugs are needed for. Drugs that mimic MSCs might also be possible, as could testing to see if individual infections will respond to this approach.



Journal reference: The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(13)70234-0 and DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(13)70295-9

Grief. 180 grand for the long-term dose of heavy anti-biotics. But how much is this new MSC treatment then? No wonder the "3rd world" is dying.

I nearly died just looking at that figure.

The Indian govt should provide this new treatment free and make it widely available. India is hard hit with TB.





An even earlier report, not about a cure but something that helps in recovery:



nytimes.com/2012/09/11/health/vitamin-d-speeds-recovery-from-tuberculosis-scientists-report.html?_r=0





And BBC(?) news mentioned how scientists trying to neutralise TB bacteria by turning off some genes ended up making the test colony totally resistant to any known drug. (Way to go, scientists. Anything else they should tell us about?) Let's hope these strains of our bacterial cousins don't escape the lab, let alone fall into the wrong hands (like the population control freaks of the west who only ever direct their population control efforts at the "3rd world". Never mind that the west stole the Americas, genocided its natives, and then proceeded to multiply out of control there. The world's European population size is unnatural, right? Europeans were restricted to Europe in the beginning. And if it wasn't for their illegal commandeering of others' land - coupled with genocide of the local peoples - European population figures wouldn't be so unnaturally huge right now, disproportionate to their original presence on the planet. <- And the west always needs to be reminded of that when it screeches in alarm - as it has repeatedly done - that "dark people" are growing out of control, despite this being in the latter's *own* homelands.)





[Barely on topic: NewScientist had an interesting article (somewhere this year I think) about how TB bacteria have long co-evolved with humans in an ... interesting relationship, one that was not always detrimental to humanity but borderline symbiotic almost.]





The main news was:



au.ibtimes.com/articles/575077/20141206/apocalypse-superbugs-humanity-mass-death-bacteria-antibiotic.htm

Apocalypse Alert: Scientists Warned of Rising Superbugs that Potentially Could Wipe-out Humanity

By Erik Pineda | December 6, 2014 2:15 PM EST



[...]

In the same report, 58,000 of infant deaths in India last year have been blamed to bacterial infections that caught medical doctors by surprise as many of the cases involved health conditions that previously have responded to antibiotics.

newscientist.com/article/dn24848-soupup-your-immune-cells-to-tackle-drugresistant-tb.html

Soup-up your immune cells to tackle drug-resistant TB

19:35 09 January 2014 by Debora MacKenzie



nytimes.com/2012/09/11/health/vitamin-d-speeds-recovery-from-tuberculosis-scientists-report.html?_r=0