*
Drug
Resistance To Antibiotics
Is Failing.
The
list of drug options via
doctors is short and getting shorter.
New
bacteria are pushing our
immune system's to the edge.
Every
month more and more drugs
are failing to combat disease.
Drug resistance is partially our
own fault for
trusting in doctors with blind faith and willingly
allowing them to prescribe
countless poisonous drug cocktails, especially
when we are desperate for
relief from pain. The doctors are first and
foremost to blame as they have
long placed profit before honesty and knowledge,
scribbling out prescriptions
as fast as we ask for them.
The article below explains what is
happening today
and hopefully will prevent so many people reaching
for quick fixes with
toxic medications. Our immune systems are shot.
Detox and radical changes
in lifestyle and thinking must now take place if
we are to remain healthy
and not succumb to the never ending strains of new
bacteria that are flooding
populations worldwide.
Bacteria
race ahead of drugs.
Falling
behind: Deadly infections
increasingly able to beat antibiotics.
Sabin Russell
- Sunday, January
20, 2008
At a busy microbiology lab in San
Francisco, bad
bugs are brewing inside vials of human blood, or
sprouting inside petri
dishes, all in preparation for a battery of
tests.These tests will tell
doctors at UCSF Medical Center which kinds of
bacteria are infecting their
patients, and which antibiotics have the best
chance to knock those infections
down.With disturbing regularity, the list of
available options is short,
and it is getting shorter.
Dr. Jeff Brooks has been director
of the UCSF
lab for 29 years, and has watched with a mixture
of fascination and dread
how bacteria once tamed by antibiotics evolve
rapidly into forms that practically
no drug can treat. "These organisms are very
small," he said, "but they
are still smarter than we are."
Among the most alarming of these
is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, a bug that used to be
confined to vulnerable hospital
patients, but now is infecting otherwise healthy
people in schools, gymnasiums
and the home. As MRSA continues its natural
evolution, even more drug-resistant
strains are emerging. The most aggressive of these
is one called USA300.
Last week, doctors at San
Francisco General Hospital
reported that a variant of that strain, resistant
to six important antibiotics
normally used to treat staph, may be transmitted
by sexual contact and
is spreading among gay men in San Francisco,
Boston, New York and Los Angeles.
Yet the problem goes far beyond
one bug and a
handful of drugs. Entire classes of mainstay
antibiotics are being threatened
with obsolescence, and bugs far more dangerous
than staph are evolving
in ominous ways. "We are on the verge of losing
control of the situation,
particularly in the hospitals," said Dr. Chip
Chambers, chief of infectious
disease at San Francisco General Hospital.
The
reasons for increasing drug
resistance are well known:
- Overuse of
antibiotics, which speeds the natural
evolution of bacteria, promoting new mutant
strains resistant to those
drugs.
- Careless
prescribing of antibiotics that aren't
effective for the malady in question, such as a
viral infection.
- Patient demand for
antibiotics when they aren't
needed.
- Heavy use of
antibiotics in poultry and livestock
feed, which can breed resistance to similar
drugs for people.
- Germ strains that
interbreed at hospitals, where
infection controls as simple as hand-washing are
lax.
All this is happening
while the supply
of new
antibiotics from drug
company laboratories
is running dry.
Since commercial production of
penicillin began
in the 1940s, antibiotics have been the miracle
drugs of modern medicine,
suppressing infectious diseases that have
afflicted human beings for thousands
of years. But today, as a generation of Baby
Boomers begins to enter a
phase of life marked by the ailments of aging, we
are running out of miracles.
Top infectious disease
doctors are saying that
lawmakers and the
public at large do not
realize the grave implications
of this trend.
"Within just a few years, we could
be seeing that
most of our microorganisms are resistant to most
of our antibiotics," said
Dr. Jack Edwards, chief of infectious diseases at
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
At Brooks' microbiology
laboratory, the evolutionary
struggle of bacteria versus antibiotics is on
display every day. He grabbed
a clear plastic dish that grew golden-hued MRSA
germs taken from a patient
a few days earlier. Inside were seven paper dots,
each impregnated with
a different drug. If the antibiotic worked, the
dot had a clear ring around
it - a zone where no germs could grow. No ring
meant the drug had failed.
This test was typical. Three drugs worked,
four had failed.
The strategy for nearly 70 years
has been to stay
a step ahead of resistance by developing new
antibiotics. In the past decade,
however, major drugmakers have been dropping out
of the field. The number
of new antibiotics in development has plummeted.
During the five-year
period ended in 1987, the FDA licensed 16 novel
antibiotics. In the most
recent five-year period, only five were
approved.
For drugmakers, the economics
are simple: An
antibiotic can cure an infection in a matter of
days. There is much more
money in finding drugs that must be taken for a
lifetime.
Toll of antibiotic
resistance.
With antibiotic research lagging,
the bugs are
catching up, and infections are taking a terrible
toll. The federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that
each
year 99,000 Americans die of various bacterial
infections that they pick
up while hospitalized - more than double the
number killed every year in
automobile accidents.
Of the 1.7 million
hospital-acquired infections
that occur each year, studies show, 70 percent
are resistant to at least
one antibiotic. Drug-resistant staph is
rapidly becoming a major public
health menace. Last fall, the CDC estimated that
MRSA alone has killed
19,000 Americans. Most of these patients picked up
the bug in the hospital,
but it is now spreading in urban and suburban
neighborhoods across the
nation.
Peg McQueary's struggle to
survive:
"MRSA is killing people. It almost
killed me,"
said Peg McQueary, whose life was upended when she
nicked her leg with
a razor three years ago. Within days, her leg was
grotesquely swollen,
red from foot to knee. Her husband wheeled her
into a Kaiser medical office,
where her doctor took one look and rushed her to
an isolation room. She
was placed on intravenous vancomycin, a drug
reserved for the most serious
cases of MRSA. Since that frightening week, the
42-year-old Roseville woman
has spent much of her life in and out of
hospitals, and she's learned just
how difficult these infections can be to treat.
McQueary has burned through
drug after drug, but the staph keeps coming back.
She's been hooked up
at her home to bags of vancomycin and swallowed
doses of linezolid, clindamycin
and a half a dozen other antibiotics with barely
pronounceable names and
limited effect.
One of the newest antibiotics,
intravenous daptomycin
- approved by the Food and Drug Administration in
2003 - seems to work
the best, but it has not prevented recurrences.
"It's just a struggle to
do everyday things," she said. "I am ready to
scream about it." Today,
she moderates a Web site, MRSA Resources Support
Forum, swapping stories
with other sufferers. "Giving them a place to vent
is some sort of healing
for me," she said.
McQueary's travails are becoming
an all-too-familiar
American experience. As bacteria evolve new ways
to sidestep antibiotics,
doctors treating infections find themselves with a
dwindling list of options.
Old-line drugs are losing their punch, while the
newer ones are both costly
and laden with side effects.
Drugs' weakening grip.
Dr. Joseph Guglielmo, chairman of
the Department
of Clinical Pharmacy at UCSF, closely tracks the
effectiveness of dozens
of antibiotics against different infectious
bacteria. Laminated color-coded
cards called antibiograms are printed up for
hospital physicians each year.
They chart the success rate of each antibiotic
against at least 12 major
pathogens. These charts show how antibiotics, like
tires slowly leaking
air, are losing strength year by year.
As head of the hospital pharmacy,
Guglielmo oversees
a small warehouse at the medical center that
stores millions of dollars
worth of prescription drugs that are used every
day to treat patients there.
Strolling down the aisles that houses bins of
antibiotics, he reached for
a bottle of imipenem, and cradled the little vial
in the palm of his hand.
"This one is the last line of defense," he said.
Imipenem was approved by the FDA
in 1985. A powerful
member of the carbapenem family - the latest in a
long line of penicillin-like
drugs - it is frequently used in hospitals today
because it can still defeat
a wide variety of germs that have outwitted the
earlier-generation antibiotics.
But at a cost of about $60 a day, and with a
safety profile that includes
risk of seizure, it is a "Big Gun" drug that must
be used carefully. As
soon as doctors discover that a lesser antibiotic
will work, they will
stop prescribing imipenem, like soldiers
conserving their last remaining
stores of ammunition.
Now, there are signs of
trouble.
Imipenem
has been the antibiotic of choice for
doctors treating Klebsiella, a vigorous microbe
that causes pneumonia in
hospitalized patients. But in June 2005, New York
City doctors reported
in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine
outbreaks of imipenem-resistant
Klebsiella. Fifty-nine such cases were logged at
just two hospitals. The
death rate among those whose infections entered
their bloodstreams was
47 percent. Last year, Israeli doctors
battled an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant
Klebsiella that has killed more than 400
patients.
Cipro's dramatic decline.
The antibiotic Cipro, approved by
the Food and
Drug Administration in 1987, is familiar to
millions of Americans because
it is widely prescribed for pneumonia, urinary
tract infections and sexually
transmitted diseases. It was the drug used to
treat victims of the anthrax
mailings that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
Unlike most antibiotics, which
originated from
natural toxins produced by bacteria, Cipro came
from tinkering with a chemical
compound used to fight malaria. The German drug
giant Bayer patented Cipro's
active ingredient in 1983, and it subsequently
became the most widely sold
antibiotic in the world.
At hospitals across the country,
however, clinicians
have witnessed a remarkable drop-off in the
utility of Cipro against more
commonly encountered germs. Antibiograms from the
UCSF lab highlight the
alarming erosion: As recently as 1999, Cipro was
effective against 95 percent
of specimens of E. coli - bacteria responsible for
the most common hospital-acquired
infections in the United States. By 2006, Cipro
would work against only
60 percent of samples tested.
The bacterial evolution that has
so quickly sapped
Cipro has also reduced the effectiveness of the
entire family of related
antibiotics called fluoroquinolones - drugs such
as Levaquin, Floxin, and
Noroxin. "If there is ever a group of drugs that
has taken a beating, it
is these," said UCSF pharmacy chief Guglielmo.
Against Acinetobacter - a bug
responsible for
rising numbers of bloodstream and lung infections
in intensive care units,
as well as among combat casualties in Iraq - Cipro's
effectiveness fell
from 80 percent in 1999 to 10 percent just four
years later. Cipro
has also lost ground against Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, a common cause of
pneumonia in hospitalized patients. Nearly 80
percent of the bugs tested
were susceptible to Cipro in 1999. That fell to 65
percent by 2004.
At UCSF, doctors carefully monitor
the trends
in drug resistance and modify their prescribing
patterns accordingly. As
a result, they have been able to nudge some of
these resistance levels
down. Cipro's effectiveness against Acinetobacter
crept up to 40 percent
last year, for example, but the overall trend
remains alarming.
Although MRSA infections have been
capturing headlines,
bugs such as Acinetobacter, Klebsiella and
Pseudomonas are keeping doctors
awake at night. They come from a class of
pathogens called Gram-negative
bacteria, which typically have an extra layer of
microbial skin to ward
off antibiotics, and internal pumps that literally
drive out antibiotics
that penetrate.
Gram-negative infections have
always been difficult
to treat, and few new drugs are in development.
Some researchers believe
that the pipeline for new antibiotics is drying up
because it is simply
getting more difficult to outwit the bugs. "It
may be that we've already
found all the good antibiotics," warned Chambers,
San Francisco General
Hospital's infectious disease chief. "If that is
so, then we've really
got to be careful how we use the ones we have."
Bacteria's natural
evolution.
Terry Hazen, senior scientist at
Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and director of its ecology
program, is not at all
surprised by the tenacity of our bacterial foes.
"We are talking about
3.5 billion years of evolution," he said. "They
are the dominant life on
Earth."
Bacteria have invaded virtually
every ecological
niche on the planet. Human explorers of
extreme environments such as
deep wells and mines are still finding new
bacterial species. "As
you go deeper into the subsurface, thousands and
thousands of feet, you
find bacteria that have been isolated for millions
of years - and you find
multiple
antibiotic resistance," Hazen said.In his
view, when bacteria develop
resistance to modern antibiotics, they are merely
rolling out old tricks
they mastered eons ago in their struggle to live
in harsh environments
in competition with similarly resilient species.
Drug industry economics are also a
factor. "It
takes a hell of a lot of effort to find the next
really good drug," said
Steven Projan, vice president of New Jersey
pharmaceutical giant Wyeth
Inc. The costs of bringing a new drug to market
are hotly debated. A Tufts
University study estimated $802 million; the
consumer group Public Citizen
pegs it at $110 million. Either way, the
investment is huge.
By 1990, according to the
Infectious Diseases
Society of America, half the major drugmakers in
Japan and the United States
had cut back or halted antibiotic research.
Since 2000, some of the biggest
names in pharmaceutical development - Roche,
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott
Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Aventis and Procter
& Gamble - had joined
the exodus.
By common measures used to gauge
the profit potential
of new drugs, antibiotics fall way behind, Projan
explained. For every
$100 million that a new antibiotic might yield,
after projected revenue
and expenses are tallied, a new cancer drug will
generate $300 million.
A new drug for arthritis, by this same analysis,
brings in $1.1 billion.
Investors
have been placing their bets accordingly.
In 2002, Wyeth had sharply
curtailed its own antibiotic
drug discovery programs. "We tried to get out of
the field, but one of
the reasons we did not get out altogether is we
feel we have a public responsibility
to fund more research," said Projan.
Wyeth's decision to keep some
antibiotic research
alive eventually paid off. In June 2005, the FDA
licensed Tygacil, an intravenous
antibiotic for complicated skin diseases such as
drug-resistant staph infection.
Only one new antibiotic for oral or intravenous
use has won FDA approval
since.
Pointing a
finger at doctors.
The waning of antibiotics in the
arsenal of modern
medicine has been going on for so long that some
doctors fear a kind of
complacency has set in. Increasingly, the medical
profession is pointing
a finger at itself.
"We have behaved very badly," said
Dr. Louis Rice,
a Harvard-educated, Columbia-trained specialist in
infectious diseases.
"We have made a lot of stupid choices." His words
brought a nervous silence
to thousands of his colleagues, as he delivered a
keynote speech in 2006
for the American Society for Microbiology's annual
conference in San Francisco.
Rice, a professor at Cleveland's
Case Western
Reserve University, said doctors and drug
companies alike are responsible for breeding
resistance by "the indiscriminate
dumping of antibiotics into our human patients."
Drug-resistant germs contaminate
the bedrails,
the catheter lines, the blood pressure cuffs and
even the unwashed hands
of doctors, nurses and orderlies. The germs keep
evolving, swapping drug-resistance
traits with other microbes. He likened American
intensive-care units -
the high-tech enclaves where the most seriously
ill patients are treated
- to "toxic waste dumps."
Drug companies, he said, have a
responsibility
to refill the nation's depleted medicine chest. He
suggested that a tax
- similar to a Superfund tax placed on polluters
to clean up toxic waste
sites - be imposed on companies that have dropped
antibiotic research.
It would support drugmakers that are still in the
game. "Your products
that you've made billions and billions and
billions and billions of dollars
on have created this problem, and you can't just
walk away," he said.
Rice has stressed that the
existing arsenal of
antibiotics should be used wisely, and that often
means sparingly. During
a half century of antibiotic use, he said, there
is scant research on how short a course of drugs
is actually needed to
cure a patient. Instead, doctors routinely
prescribe a week to 10-day course of drugs
recommended by manufacturers.
If patients are taking antibiotics after their
infections are truly gone,
they are creating conditions that breed
resistance. Indeed, a Dutch study
showed that one kind of pneumonia can be treated
just as successfully with
three days of amoxicillin as with the traditional
eight.
Since drug companies cannot be
expected to spend
money on research that could trim sales of their
products, federally funded
agencies such as the National Institutes of Health
should do the job, Rice
said in a recent interview.
He also took his own specialty to
task for failing
to protect the most important weapons its arsenal.
Infectious disease experts
at hospitals must find the "backbone" to stop
other doctors from prescribing
antibiotics unnecessarily, Rice said. He
argued they should assert
their authority to control antibiotic usage, just
as cancer specialists
have a say in which chemotherapy drugs are
prescribed by surgeons. And
all health care professionals, he added, "have to
wash their damn hands." -
http://www.sfgate.com
So how do we stay healthy?
Cell
Oxygenation - Cell
Detoxification - Hydration
- Cell
Nutrition
Four machines for natural
healing:
Sun
Ancon
Chi Machine - Far
Infrared
Hothouse Sauna - Electro
Reflexology - E-Power
Detox has never
been as important
as it is today,
in
order to combat what ever
happens tomorrow!
