Keep in mind that media outlets are unlikely to point out the fact that antibiotic resistance is mainly caused by antibiotic overuse on farms for livestock (due to the conflict of interest when so many ad dollars come from food).
Yes, humans failing to finish their run for the time prescribed for them, and use of antibiotics for viral infections have been a problem too. But those are completely dwarfed by farm use.
Funding for new antibiotic research should come from taxes on big agribusiness and there should be more regulation on antibiotic use for livestock.
Well something between 50-80% of antibiotics are used in agriculture. Which is huge, but it's within the same order of magnitude. I'm not sure there is evidence that the majority of antibiotic resistance is caused by agriculture.
I know for example my brother takes a low dose of antibiotics everyday to treat acne. Lots of people do. That can't possibly be good for preventing resistance.
Also the germs animals have are different than those in humans. Do cattle spread gohnerrea? And the antibiotics they use are different than those used in human medicine as well. The biggest problem is it is becoming resistant even to the last line antibiotics we have, and that can't be from agriculture.
Ask your brother to stop the intake of sugar completely for 3 month (including all the hidden sugar in any processed food). I know this from myself and couple people which had acne that if you stop the intake of artificial sugar long enough the acne will mostly vanish. Even today whenever I eat high amounts of sugar I know for sure what will happen. I think this is a good example of misuse of antibiotics.
There are many good reasons for cutting down on sugar, but before we get enthusiastic, it is worth recognising that there is no established link between diet and acne.
Yes, the cause of acne can be different from person to person, but if you really think that the building blocks (ie. food) of our body doesn't have an effect on our largest organ then you are being willfully ignorant. From my experience, many Dermatologists still deny the connection for whatever reason, but I have come across many instances (including my own) where cutting back on processed sugars and dairy has drastically impacted the levels of acne someone has.
My sister-in-law is sitting across from me and is currently dealing with the acne directly related to the amount of sugary drinks she has started consuming since moving (Thai Iced Teas are addicting)
I chose that source because a) I'm British and b) the NHS has a vested interest in reducing its drug bill and antibiotic usage as far as possible. So if there were a strong correlation between diet and acne and GPs could reduce treatment by suggesting dietary changes - they would.
If you look at the article you linked the most substantial source is a study of 23 Australian men, which showed interesting, but not conclusive results. So at best the jury is out.
Note that these were low GI diets, so we are not just talking about sugar, but simple starches found in potatoes, white bread, rice etc.
> but if you really think that the building blocks (ie. food) of our body doesn't have an effect on our largest organ then you are being willfully ignorant.
Intuitively, of course this feels right. In practice, I'll wait to see the actual studies, rather than the anecdotage.
And I'm not comfortable calling the majority of dermatologists, the NHS etc "willfully ignorant "
The fact that your sister in law has moved has undoubtedly introduced a variety of life-style and dietary changes. That you've picked sugary drinks as the most important factor isn't really compelling evidence.
It's silly to refuse advice and to quote an article that doesn't deny that there could be an link, and it just say that there is no proof that definitively there is a link. It's extremely hard to do tests on humans whether something works on them or not, because scientists can't lock us in the cages to make sure we won't do anything else that will impact the results.
Right now the only way to find out is to try yourself, it is free after all, and you can't deny that in any case (whether it works for acne our not) reduction of sugar intake is good for your body.
Yep, there's one thing to tell you to do something that could potentially be harmful, vs telling you to not doing something because it might be harmful to you.
It took 50 years before it we noticed that there might be a relation with smoking causing a lung cancer and 80 years (1980) before we were sure about it[1][2].
Acne though is far less serious issue, and not many people would be interested finding cause for it, especially since it would kill business for companies selling solutions that treat the symptoms (which do help, but you need to use them regularly)
> "Yep, there's one thing to tell you to do something that could potentially be harmful, vs telling you to not doing something because it might be harmful to you.".
I don't think anyone was suggesting that it would be harmful to reduce sugar intake (although, I'm sure there may be cases where it is, or perhaps it's just easier said than done). I think it's more that there's apparently no proven link between sugar intake and acne and, given all the possible things that someone try in order do to reduce their acne, it might not make sense to choose one that has no evidence supporting it. Or at least, exhaust the other possibilities first.
Also, in the parent to my comment you say "scientists can't lock us in the cages to make sure we won't do anything else that will impact the results". But, they can, and do. It's called a controlled clinical trial. I've participated in one that went on for a week (was well paid for it) where we were kept in a room, fed a designed diet, and restricted in our activities. There were test subjects in the building who were in for much longer than my trial. So I don't think the idea that it's impossible to (dis)prove these things is accurate.
How can you be 100% sure it's the sugar? Perhaps it's a new set of chemicals and bacteria in the water supply of her new home? Perhaps it's the tea itself, the temperature of the drink, the cream, new molds or pollen in the air where she now lives? Or the stress of moving?
Or the stress of being a social outcast for giving up sugar?
People who say they don't eat sugar make no sense, it's meaningless. My mother in law "doesn't eat sugar" but I see her eat stuff with sugar in it all the time. Fruit, most vegetables, and milk all have sugar in them.
"A low-glycemic-load diet improves symptoms in acne vulgaris patients: a randomized controlled trial"
Cohort size 43 persons.
My summary: At 12 wk, mean total lesion counts had decreased more in the low-glycemic-load group ( 23.5 +/- 3.9) than in the control group ( 12.0 +/- 3.5).
That's because the cause of acne is so different person to person. There's teenage acne which definitely isn't caused by diet and goes away eventually. A regimen of clearasil works for these lucky folks.
Then there's the severe type that always recur every month. Less than 1% of the population has this and the standard advice never works for these people. For some, changing diet works. For some it doesn't but thats the type of acne that's possibly linked to diet.
So saying there's no link is really misleading. There's no universal law that says red meat causes acne for everyone but that doesn't mean it doesn't cause acne for you
> Overall these theories provide a plausible and useful guide to the possible mechanisms by which a high-GI diet and dairy products can exert their effects in the pathogenesis of acne and can explain in part why people native to Papua New Guinea and Paraguay, living non-Westernized lifestyles, have no acne compared with more Westernized populations such as in Belgium (Table 2 and Table S1; see Supporting Information). However, they provide only the first step to understanding the link between diet and acne.
Might be that the study says it's a myth but I know enough people including me which did nothing else then cutting down sugar and it worked. So for me the myth seems to be true. Also to be clear not eating less I mean full on stop! No sugar for month.
Also it's generally not useful to provide links like this. I can create hundreds of "sources" for you which say its myth. I can also do the opposite. If you want to link something please link a full blown study with hundreds or thousands of participants over at least half a year. Then we can talk.
It's odd that you require a full blown study with hundreds or thousands of participants before being willing to talk but you base your own conclusion on anecdotal evidence.
I can say that this corresponds to my experience. I underwent a rigorous transformation from obese teenager one summer, which included a fairly strict diet. I used to have bad acne but since then have been barely troubled by it. I have a number of friends who have acne trouble who say they have tried "everything" but I wonder have they tried anything like this for such a protracted period ...
It is really hard to stop eating sugar so drastically but it helped me a lot. After that eating even a small piece of chocolate was giving me a sugar high. High in the sense of you feel it in your whole buddy and get goosebumps. Nowadays I am more relaxed regarding sugar but I am nowhere close to "bad old times". I went from 2L-3L of high sugar soft drinks like Coke and high amounts of sweets every day to zero for a while and after that started slowly.
I remember going back to college after my "summer of dieting" (proper balanced, calorie restrictive, but not the crazy kind) and having my first chocolate bar. Sent me to the moon and back.
There's a study for treating gonorrhea with solithromycin going on right now [0]. It's a single dose, too (alleviating fears of not finishing the entire run).
For example if someone were infected with both antibiotic-resistant gut bacteria (acquired from eating contaminated meat) and gonorrhea, it's possible the latter could acquire antibiotic resistance genes from the former.
Eating the livestock (or drinking the milk) transfers antibiotics to our bodies, and then we become the environment in which bacteria are selected for resistance to antibiotics.
That's not how it works at all. The amount of antibiotics in slaughtered livestock is miniscule. In fact, the FDA requires a "clean out" phase for livestock treated with certain drugs to ensure the levels in the final meat are low enough.
Antibiotic resistance is generally spread via plasmid-mediated resistance. Overuse of antibiotics in any capacity, regardless of ingestion into humans, causes some bacteria to evolve resistance. Bacteria are promiscuous with their DNA, and resistance by one organism on one context (e.g. livestock) can easily get transmitted to a completely different organism in a completely context (e.g. humans).
Having said all of that, there are many potential antibiotics out there that haven't been fully researched (almost all currently prescribed antibiotics are beta lactam variants, which is only one small class), and this "cannot be treated" stuff is mostly just bad journalism.
Some of the biggest challenges in antibiotics are economics not technical
e.g.,
http://emerald.tufts.edu/med/apua/news/news-newsletter-vol-3...
The only recent company built on antibiotics (Cubist) was purchased for a revenue stream and its R&D was disassembled by Pharma in the last year or so. You can bet that a good amount of organization knowledge has been lost. There are some start ups out there, but as far as I understand, there is little will to provide of equity or strategic funding for early development programs/companies. With the timelines in this industry, that doesn't bode well for 'breakthroughs' in the near future. With the recent idiocy and avarice of some of the "actors" in the industry (e.g., pharma bro, epi-pen). I am bracing for a backlash on pricing, even on needed products) which would further decrease the economic will for companies/funds to invest in early stage programs.
Some comments here tout that the the wonders of science will solve this given time. Maybe so, but it's also possible that the burden of economics (and lowest-common denominator politics) could quench the wonders of science for the near term.
There was an article I read (can't find the link now) about how people discard unused antibiotics improperly and how bacteria in the wild become resistant over time.
For the particular case of antibiotic use, what I've seen is that farms with 10 cows generally apply antibiotics only when needed and farms with 500 cows generally apply antibiotics by putting it in everyones feed; it makes economic sense for both of them because of differences on how they work with these cows every day.
From what I've seen, letting cows die or mistreating them is a much worse problem in small agribusiness.
This of course depends on local regulation and legislation. But at least over here (northern EU), the bureaucracy is heavy and requirements quite strong.
Large-scale farming units have internal processes and they have more resources; there are many people doing the work with more thorough official oversight. Small-scale animal care, i.e. family or single-person farms, may be dependent on one person only. When illness - particularly mental illness - or old age kicks in, the animals may be neglected or mistreated in abhorrent ways.
On the other hand, small-scale agribusiness is also where the best animal care can be seen, there is actually an emotional bond between the carer and the animals.
Bad care is eventually caught because when you can't treat your animals well, you won't do your paperwork either. However, it is a strain on small farms as there is a fixed overhead in paperwork that is not much dependent on farm size, so there's a lot more to do per animal on small farms and thus there is more work/cost.
I suppose it is possible that large agribusinesses where you live do this... it is also possible that the small farmers near you have an axe to grind with their larger competition, and/or are open to accepting and spreading gossip and rumors without much basis in reality.
That is certainly a possibility! I didn't mean to imply it wasn't. I did a some quick looking and if your in the US, the USDA guarantees livestock insurance, this likely results in a distortion of the risk and perhaps shifts the incentives towards this sort of behavior.
But I would caution against taking rumor and gossip as strong supporting evidence.
Conflict of interests is not a conspiracy... unless you believe stuff like Fox not covering Republican scandals is a conspiracy (its just Fox being Fox)
I just want to corroborate the poster with Brazilian data.
Yes there is a 'law' that requires prescription and safe keeping of records about each sell.
But as the same laws on every level they are only enforced at the middle class level (higher and lower class do not care).
I am Brazilian and I do wish that law was more pervasive but My wish do not turn the facts other way.
So yes, abuse in third world is rampant.
I don't think that's a widespread problem when it comes to antibiotics. For some other kinds of medication, it's probably true that people get them from the black market (think benzos). But antibiotics? Really? Do you know anyone who has ever done that? I'm sure those places exist but to say they are affecting resistance is a very big claim. And it has nothing to do with social class, every pharmacy I've been to in Brazil has been similarly paranoid about prescriptions, regardless of the neighborhood or clientele. Maybe that's a Southeast bias, but I'd like to see some hard data about black market antibiotics being so common.
Yes it is a Southeast Bias [1].
Check the map and choose the lowest IDH regions. and google it.
and "For some other kinds of medication, it's probably true that people get them from the black market (think benzos)."
Please, the market does not care what kind of medicine is dealt with, the black market is there to provide anything.
You just need to go to the country side to see it.
That is just not true. In Brazil where I live antibiotics are highly controlled and pharmacies will get in trouble if they sell them without a prescription. They take several steps to verify each prescription. The same is true for other countries I've visited in South America. Self medication is a real problem but it's usually done by people who have leftovers from past treatments or get these from friends.
Yes, humans failing to finish their run for the time prescribed for them, and use of antibiotics for viral infections have been a problem too. But those are completely dwarfed by farm use.
Funding for new antibiotic research should come from taxes on big agribusiness and there should be more regulation on antibiotic use for livestock.