Maine Voices: How antibiotics can make us sicker

Maine Voices: How antibiotics can make us sicker

Sun. Nov 11, 2012

By Dr. Stephen Sears, state epidemiologist 

AUGUSTA – The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Maine doctors and Maine hospitals have news for parents this cold and flu season: Antibiotics don't work for a cold or the flu.

Antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses. And colds, flu and most sore throats are caused by viruses. Antibiotics don't touch viruses – never have, never will. And it's not really news. It's a long-documented medical fact.

But tell that to parents seeking relief for a child's runny nose. Research shows that most Americans have either missed the message about appropriate antibiotic use or they simply don't believe it.

According to public opinion research, there is a perception that "antibiotics cure everything."

Americans believe in the power of antibiotics so much that patients go to the doctor expecting to get a prescription. And many do. Three out of 10 children who visit an outpatient provider with the common cold receive an antibiotic. This is an improvement from previous years, but antibiotics are not indicated for a common cold.

Why does this happen? Physicians often are too pressured for time to engage in lengthy explanations of why antibiotics won't work. And when the diagnosis is uncertain – as many symptoms for viral and bacterial infections are similar – doctors are more likely to yield to patient demands for antibiotics.

The problem is, taking antibiotics when they are not needed can do more harm than good. Widespread inappropriate use of antibiotics is one of the major reasons for an increase in drug-resistant bacteria. Families and entire communities feel the impact when disease-causing germs become resistant to antibiotics.

The most obvious consequence of inappropriate antibiotic use is its effect on the sick patient. When antibiotics are incorrectly used to treat children or adults with viral infections, such as colds and flu, they aren't getting the best care for their condition. A course of antibiotics won't fight the virus, make the patient feel better, yield a quicker recovery or keep others from getting sick.

Antibiotics also can have serious side effects ranging from nausea, vomiting and diarrhea to life-threatening allergic reactions.

A less obvious consequence of antibiotic overuse is the boost it gives to drug-resistant disease-causing bacteria. Almost every type of bacteria has become less responsive to antibiotic treatment when it really is needed. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria can quickly spread to relatives, classmates and co-workers – threatening the community with a new strain of infectious disease that is more difficult to cure and more expensive to treat.

For example, cases of H1N1 flu have shown resistance to oseltamivir, one of only two antivirals that work against it. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, remains a problem in many health care settings and can be life-threatening for patients who have weakened immune systems. Even the common sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea is now showing potential for resistance to cephalosporins, the only recommended antibiotic left to treat this infection.

Antibiotic resistance increases the economic burden on the entire health care system. Resistant infections are often more severe, leading to longer hospital stays and increased costs for treatment.

According to the latest available data, antibiotic resistance in the United States costs an estimated $20 billion a year in excess health care costs, $35 million in other societal costs and more than 8 million additional days that people spend in the hospital.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that antibiotic resistance is one of the world's most pressing public health problems. For this reason, the Maine CDC, the Maine Medical Association, the Maine Hospital Association, the Maine Osteopathic Association and the Maine Public Health Association have joined with the U.S. CDC to recognize Nov. 12-18 as Get Smart About Antibiotics Week.

Americans of all ages can lower this risk by talking to their doctors and using antibiotics appropriately during this cold and flu season.

Maine Sunday Telegram

Antibiotics: friend or foe?

Antibiotics: friend or foe?


Monday, November 05, 2012

By David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The overuse of antibiotics not only boosts health care costs but causes bacterial resistance to the drugs -- and possibly health problems in childhood

When patients demand antibiotics for a cold, the flu, or any other viral infections, physicians sometimes appease them with a prescription. On other occasions, doctors prescribe antibiotics for infections most commonly caused by viruses but sometimes caused by bacteria or that progress to a bacterial infection.

Antibiotics kill germs -- bacteria -- and have no effect on viruses, making the above practices unnecessary and dangerous to health.

The overuse of antibiotics not only boosts health care costs but also causes bacterial resistance to the drugs. Examples include the growing difficulty in treating serious and sometimes fatal bacterial infections, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile (C diff), both of which are on the rise.

Researchers also are linking health problems during childhood to early use and overuse of antibiotics.

When given in the first six months of life, antibiotics are now being suspected of leading to obesity and even type 2 diabetes, with a lifelong ripple effect on health. Antibiotics also can alter a child's immune system, although the health impacts are not yet clear.

"Antibiotic resistance is one of the world's most pressing public health threats," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states. More than 50 percent of antibiotics are unnecessarily prescribed in doctors' offices for upper respiratory infections including coughs and colds, most of which are caused by viruses. Half of all antibiotics used in hospitals are unnecessary or inappropriate, the CDC says.


Reactions that children have to antibiotics "are the most common cause of emergency department visits for adverse drug events," according to the CDC. Children can have as many as nine colds a year. Studies show that three of 10 children who receive outpatient health care for the common cold are prescribed unneeded antibiotics.

While those numbers have been improving in recent years, any unneeded use of antibiotics causes harm. For the past 70 years, antibiotics have been powerful tools, but their overuse is changing that. 

"Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change in a way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of antibiotics," the CDC's "Get Smart" program states. "Infections with resistant bacteria have become more common in health care and community settings, and many bacteria have become resistant to more than one type or class of antibiotics."

It also is getting more difficult to develop new antibiotic drugs.

"The problem is that we expect antibiotics to work for every illness, but they don't," the CDC says, calling for more effective antibiotic stewardship programs.

Arjun Srinivasan, associate director of CDC's health-care-associated infection prevention programs, said the "Get Smart" programs are making progress in improving how antibiotics are used, but the problem is far from being resolved. Next week is CDC's "Get Smart" week to raise national awareness about the problem.

Recent research completed at New York University's Langone Medical Center has found that antibiotics prescribed for infants in the first six months of life can alter the baby's metabolism in ways that can lead to obesity and even type 2 diabetes, with the chance of those health impacts resonating throughout the person's life.

Studies completed under the leadership of Martin Blaser, chairman of the medical center's department of medicine, determined that early doses of antibiotics kill off the natural flora in the gut, or the good bacteria that are  not only necessary to defend against bacterial infections but also involved in metabolism.

Early doses of antibiotics intensify the metabolism, causing extraction of more calories than normal from food, leading to weight gain. Dr. Blaser said a 15-year-long epidemiological study in England found that children treated with antibiotics in the first months of life had a 22 percent higher rate of obesity than those who didn't receive antibiotics during that time period. The findings, he said, may help explain the rise in type 2 diabetes in children.

A mouse study, done earlier by the team, reached similar conclusions about antibiotics altering the metabolism and immune system, he said. But evidence long has existed that antibiotics cause weight gain.

"One of the things that pointed me in this direction was the knowledge over the last 60 years that farmers were giving low doses of antibiotics to livestock to fatten them up," Dr. Blaser said. "Antibiotics are growth promoters, and they established the principles that antibiotics early in life affect early development."

The research also documented changes induced by antibiotics in different T-cell populations in the immune system.

"We are changing the composition of the natural flora and the change in composition is happening at a critical time in the child's development," Dr. Blaser said. "What happens in early life sets the stage for overall development for the rest of the person's life."

He's now working to identify how changes in the natural flora, or "microbiota," cause changes to metabolism and the immune system with hope of developing a probiotic treatment to restore the natural flora to counter or reduce the health impacts of antibiotics.

Dr. Srinivasan praised Dr. Blaser's research that identifies other health concerns linked to the use of antibiotics. But the focus is on bacterial resistance.

"Certainly the situation with antibiotic resistance is getting worse," he said. "Bacteria are developing resistance to more antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat patients or to find the right treatments for the right patients."
• The overuse of antibiotics isn't limited by age group.

A University of Pittsburgh-based research team, using Medicare Part D data from 2007 to 2009, found that one in five people 65 and older are taking at last one course of antibiotic during any three-month season of the year, with 47 percent taking at least one dose of antibiotics sometime during the year.

The study was published Sept. 24 online in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine.

Doctors who treat older adults in Southern states prescribe antibiotics more often than any other region in the United States, the study says. On average, 21.4 percent of older adults in the South are taking antibiotics during any three-month period of the year. Western states have the lowest seasonal rate of 17.4 percent, with the Northeast at 18.2 percent and the Midwest at 19.2 percent. The usage rate is highest January through March, and lowest from July through September.

The study found variations in antibiotic use across the regions, even after researchers adjusted for differences in population, suggesting that physicians and health care systems differ region to region in how antibiotics are prescribed.

Oregon and Wyoming had the lowest rate of antibiotic use among seniors, while Alabama and Mississippi had the highest. Pennsylvania ranked 23rd with 46 percent of older adults taking a course of antibiotics at least once during the year.

"Some conditions require antibiotics and some don't justify the use of antibiotics," said Yuting Zhang, the study author and assistant professor at Pitt's department of health policy and management. "Some regions do really well. What can we learn from them? What programs are they using? Can programs they are using in the West be adapted to the South?"

post-gasette

Deadly 'superbugs' on the rise: What you need to know

Deadly 'superbugs' on the rise: What you need to know

Concern has been raised once again over the threat of deadly ‘superbugs,’ after a seventh individual at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., died Friday after contracting an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria.

According to the Washington Post, the boy from Minnesota contracted the bug while being treated at the hospital for complications from a bone marrow transplant.  So far, he is the 19th patient at the NIH center to have contracted the bacteria – Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC).  The bug’s outbreak was traced back to a single patient who was carrying the bacteria when he was admitted to the hospital in the summer of 2011.  

While the NIH declined to be interviewed on the matter, the agency released a statement about the incident.

“We are deeply saddened by the deaths at the NIH Clinical Center related to [KPC],” the NIH said in a statement. “The health and welfare of patients is NIH's top priority, and NIH has – and will continue to – take every measure possible to protect patients at the Clinical Center and quell transmission.”

The NIH went on to add that “the Clinical Center is taking strong action to keep KPC from spreading further, redoubling its efforts to ensure that all the infection control and isolation strategies recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are followed stringently.”  They agency is also continuing to test for KPC and amp up their de-contamination procedures.

This latest death raises serious questions about the rise of bugs no longer treatable with antibiotics.  The emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria has become a recent dilemma in the past few years.  A notable example has been the rise of the “staph” germ known as MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – which caused unease after the CDC reported 18,650 American deaths from MRSA in 2005.

According to infectious disease experts, both MRSA and KPC are results of the same problem – the overuse of antibiotics.  Utilized in livestock feed, by medical professionals and by consumers just to treat the common cold, the abundance of antibiotics in our society has prompted evolution to select for the antibiotic-resistant trait.

“Bacteria are becoming more and more resistant as more and more antibiotics are being used – and they’re becoming smarter,” Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious disease specialist at Village Park Medical in New York City, told FoxNews.com.  “….There are limited choices for treatment.  Only a few antibiotics work in that scenario, and they’re typically antibiotics we don’t frequently use – some affect the kidney, some aren’t readily available, and some don’t lead to [good] blood levels.”

What is KPC?

K. pneumonia is an organism that lives in the large bowel, which can cause the disease Klebsiella pneumonia – a condition marked by high fever, chills and the expulsion of a thick, viscous fluid called sputum from the lungs. To combat K. pneumonia, a class of antibiotics called Carbapenems is used; however, when the organism becomes resistant to Carbpaenems, it becomes known as Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase.  

Rahimian noted KPC is one of the more dangerous strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  Unlike MRSA – which has some other treatment options apart from antibiotics – KPC has very few options, making it much more difficult to combat.

The people most susceptible to contracting KPC are those who are critically ill or who have a weakened immune system, which is why outbreaks easily occur in hospitals.  Although most of the cases have occurred at the NIH Clinical Center, all hospitals in the Northeast and beyond should be on the lookout for outbreaks of this kind.

“Since the 1990s, some drug resistant isolates of KPC have emerged,” Dr. Amy Ray, an infectious disease expert with UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, told FoxNews.com.  “And certainly the Northeast has been a focus of concern, but no hospital in the United States is immune to KPC.  In fact, the organism and KPC producing organism have been described worldwide – in Europe, Asia and South America.”

KPC spreads through direct contact of the skin, which can eventually lead to infection.  According to Rahimian, a person can also be a carrier of the bacteria and not show any symptoms.

What you can do

“Unfortunately there’s not a lot you can do as a patient,” Rahimian said.  “If other people are using unnecessary antibiotics, they are promoting the development of resistance, [which] might affect you even though you didn’t do anything.”

Because of its difficulty to identify and treat, both Rahimian and Ray say that prevention is key to combating KPC and other antibiotic-resistant bugs.  

“The single biggest effort the hospitals can undertake is to ensure that their infection control and prevention departments are up to date,” Ray said.  “Also that they are tracking and trending organisms such as these to understand their local epidemiology.  And at the single health care worker level, the most important thing is hand hygiene and the use of standard precautions to prevent the transmission from person to person.”

For the average individual, taking proper precautions – such as thoroughly washing their hands and making sure their doctors are doing the same – is crucial.  

Going beyond these anti-infection measures, many health care professionals and others are calling for more judicious use of antibiotics, in hopes to stop the emergence of antibiotic resistance.  Numerous ‘antibiotic stewardship’ campaigns are in effect to stop people from taking or prescribing antibiotics when they are not truly necessary.  

As far as research goes to develop smarter drugs to combat KPC, experts agree that funding and focus are lacking – meaning proper treatments may not be available for some time.

“We are facing a critical shortage of anti-microbial agents,” Ray said.  “The field is desperate for drug discovery.”

FoxNews

Selection of resistance at lethal and non-lethal antibiotic concentrations.

Selection of resistance at lethal and non-lethal antibiotic concentrations.

Aug 2012
Hughes D, Andersson DI.

Source

Abstract

Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Box 582, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden.

Much of what we currently know about the genetics and evolution of antibiotic-resistance is based on selections with lethal drug concentrations that allow the detection of rare mutants with strong phenotypes. These data may be misleading with regard to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in natural environments, because bacteria are frequently exposed to concentration gradients of antibiotics. A significant part of antibiotic-resistance evolution may occur when bacteria are exposed to non-lethal concentrations of drug. High-resolution competition assays show that resistance mutations are rapidly enriched, and selected de novo, at very low antibiotic concentrations. Genomic analysis is providing a better understanding of how frequent and small-effect mutations selected at very low antibiotic concentrations contribute to the step-wise development of antibiotic resistance.

PubMed

Fecal material prevails when antibiotics fail

March 4, 2012

By Rick Ruggles
World-Herald Staff Writer

Sometimes medical treatment must be as gritty as the disease it combats.

Doctors in Omaha and elsewhere increasingly place donated, diluted fecal material into patients’ guts to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria called clostridium difficile, or C. diff. The infection kills thousands of patients each year.

The therapy, which appears to work when antibiotics fail, is on the verge of widespread use. Antibiotics, in fact, are a major part of the problem.

The drugs sometimes destroy the diverse group of bacteria in the gut, allowing C. diff bacteria to move in and take over.

The gut and its fecal matter are a world of their own, teeming with rich, diverse microscopic life. A pea-size piece of stool contains millions and millions of bacteria, including hundreds of varieties. Which bacteria are “good” and which are “bad,” or whether they work in teams for specific purposes, isn’t clear.

“It’s a very complicated and complex environment that we don’t really understand,” said Dr. Alex Hewlett, a University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty member.

UNMC plans to collaborate with a cluster of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to learn more about the gut.

Scientists believe the complex environment in the intestines helps digest food, stimulate the immune system and produce vitamins.

Although physicians typically use specific antibiotics against C. diff, a small percentage of patients relapse repeatedly. Clostridium difficile causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, weakness and fever and in rare instances leads to kidney failure, colon removal or death.

“This is a big problem,” Dr. Ed Schafer of Omaha, a gastroenterologist with Midwest Gastrointestinal Associates, said of C. diff.

“By the time they’re this sick, they’re willing to try anything.”

The nation faces a growing problem with C. difficile, which finds its way onto toilet lids, tables and other surfaces through fecal matter, and can sit there for weeks as a microscopic, hard spore. The victims ingest the bacteria.

Killing the spores on surfaces requires bleach.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 7,285 Americans died of the infection in 2009, up from 793 in 1999. The increase may be attributable to greater antibiotic resistance and the emergence of a more harmful strain of the bacteria.

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics plan to use the fecal transplant therapy, although they haven’t yet. Methodist Hospital physicians have decided against it for now and have chosen to use a new antibiotic against C. diff.

Schafer said his group has used the treatment, sometimes called a “fecal transplant,” at least six times in recent years, succeeding each time in beating C. diff.

UNMC scientists have used it four times since late last year, each time successfully. They aren’t keen on the term “fecal transplant.”

“'Enteric biotherapy' is a little more pleasing term,” Hewlett said.

Marian Reyburn didn’t care what the treatment was called or what it involved. She just wanted to get better.

She attributed her C. diff to taking an antibiotic after a root canal in September 2010. She became sick and was diagnosed as having C. diff the next month.

Reyburn, who is in her 80s, battled C. diff for more than a year. She had 10 to 27 bowel movements daily and grew increasingly weak.

She and her husband, Harry, took pride in their active lives. After she became ill, he had to lift her out of bed or out of a chair. She couldn’t walk across the room without help. She had to stop driving, taking her watercolor classes, serving her church and volunteering for the Salvation Army and a local hearing-loss group.

She was placed on antibiotics and hospitalized several times. Nothing worked.

Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the division of infectious diseases at UNMC, recommended a fecal transplant.

By this time, Marian Reyburn was extremely ill and weak. “I had to do something,” she said.

Harry Reyburn donated the fecal matter.

The procedure was done in January and she improved within several days. “And it is wonderful to feel better,” Marian Reyburn said last week.

Depending on who oversees the therapy, scientists or the patients themselves prepare the material. In either case, it is watered down with a saline solution and mixed into a thick slurry. Then it’s run through a cheesecloth or coffee filter.

What’s left is a thin, brown solution that is filled with bacteria. It can be transplanted either through the colon with a colonoscope or an enema or through a nasogastric tube that is threaded into the digestive tract through the nose. It’s typically done the latter way in Omaha.

Fecal transplants aren’t new. A December 2011 report in a national journal said they first were noted in 1958 when they were used to treat a different disease, pseudomembranous enterocolitis. With little doubt, though, fecal transplants are on the cusp of far more use. Scientific papers say the treatment is 90 percent effective against the most resistant C. diff.

Rupp said fecal transplants also may be used against some other diseases, such as pseudomonas infection and vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or VRE.

UNMC will bring UNL scientists into the project because the Lincoln campus has a Gut Function Initiative that conducts research into the intestines and their microorganisms.

SouthwestNews

Catalysis and sulfa drug resistance in dihydropteroate synthase.

Mar 2012

Yun MK, Wu Y, Li Z, Zhao Y, Waddell MB, Ferreira AM, Lee RE, Bashford D, White SW.

Source

Department of Structural Biology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 38105, USA.

Abstract

The sulfonamide antibiotics inhibit dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS), a key enzyme in the folate pathway of bacteria and primitive eukaryotes. However, resistance mutations have severely compromised the usefulness of these drugs. We report structural, computational, and mutagenesis studies on the catalytic and resistance mechanisms of DHPS. By performing the enzyme-catalyzed reaction in crystalline DHPS, we have structurally characterized key intermediates along the reaction pathway. Results support an S(N)1 reaction mechanism via formation of a novel cationic pterin intermediate. We also show that two conserved loops generate a substructure during catalysis that creates a specific binding pocket for p-aminobenzoic acid, one of the two DHPS substrates. This substructure, together with the pterin-binding pocket, explains the roles of the conserved active-site residues and reveals how sulfonamide resistance arises.

PubMed

New method gives access to treasure trove of potential new antibiotics

New method gives access to treasure trove of potential new antibiotics

Scientists are reporting use of a new technology for sifting through the world's largest remaining pool of potential antibiotics to discover two new antibiotics that work against deadly resistant microbes, including the "super bugs" known as MRSA. Their report appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Sean Brady and colleagues explain that an urgent need exists for new medications to cope with microbes that shrug off the most powerful traditional antibiotics. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, for instance, are resistant to most known antibiotics. MRSA strikes at least 280,000 people in the U.S. alone every year, and almost 20,000 of those patients die. The typical way of discovering new antibiotics involves identifying and growing new bacteria from soil and other environmental samples in culture dishes in the laboratory. That environmental treasure-trove is the largest remaining potential source of new antibiotics. Researchers then analyse the bacteria to see if they make substances that could be used as antibiotics to kill other microbes. But most bacteria found in nature can't grow in the laboratory. That's why Brady and colleagues took a new approach to this problem.

The researchers removed DNA from soil bacteria that wouldn't grow in the lab. Then, they put this DNA into different bacteria that do grow well in culture dishes, and these bacteria acted like incubators for the new DNA. The approach enabled Brady's team to study the substances made by the soil bacteria's DNA in the lab. With this "metagenomics" method, they identified two new possible antibiotics called fasamycin A and fasamycin B that killed MRSA and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis, which also is becoming more resistant to known antibiotics. They also determined how the new antibiotics work. "Metagenomics has the potential to access large numbers of previously inaccessible natural antibiotics," say the researchers.

Virtual Medicine

Antibiotics Don't Help Most Sinus Infections

by Shamir Benji; February 22, 2012

Sinus infections are not pleasant. They often present with a runny nose, cough, pain around the face, fever and generalized fatigue. While some individuals may never develop a sinus infection, there are other unlucky people who tend to develop recurrent episodes of sinusitis.

Sinusitis often makes it difficult to work, breath and sleep. It can even confine one to the home.

Most individuals quickly go to their physician for treatment of the nasal drip and congested nasal passages. For the most part, doctors readily prescribe a variety of antibiotics for sinus infections.

It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of all antibiotics prescribed today are for sinus or ear infections. (3) This represents millions of doses of antibiotics with a cost running into billions of dollars for the consumer.

Now that may all be changing. A new study questions the wisdom of routinely prescribing antibiotic for sinus infections. The latest study suggests that instead of immediately prescribing antibiotics, the doctors should monitor the patient to determine if they develop worsening of the symptoms.

In this study conducted by Dr Jane Garbutt from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, patients treated with antibiotic for their sinus infections only had a small improvement compared to people who were treated with a placebo (sugar pill).

So what is the explanation for these confounding results?

Dr. Garbutt indicated that in most cases, sinus infections are due to viruses and not bacteria. Since viruses do not respond to antibiotics, there will be no difference in outcome even when one is prescribed these drugs.

It is only the rare patient who may have a bacterial sinus infection but unfortunately the doctor cannot tell by just looking whether it is a viral or bacterial infection. (1)

Based on these observations, doctors are advised to follow the patients and only prescribe antibiotics to patients whose symptoms are getting worse.

In the last three decades there has been great concern that antibiotics are liberally prescribed by physicians. While these medications are useful, prolonged and unnecessary usage has led to development of drug resistance and of course, there is also a potential for side effects.

One of the biggest problems with overuse of antibiotics has been the emergence of methicilin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

How this study will change doctor's practice in the treatment of sinus infections remains to be seen. Many physicians still continue to prescribe antibiotics for ear infections and bronchitis despite clinical evidence showing that these disorders are due to viruses and not bacteria. (2)

For the consumer, this does not mean that sinusitis does not have to be treated at all. The infection often presents with a variety of annoying symptoms which can easily be treated with home remedies.

The odd ache and facial pain can be treated with over-the-counter pain medications like Motrin. Moreover, these medications will also help reduce the fever.

It is difficult to prevent sinus infections when living in a cool temperate climate but immediately rushing to a physician at the first sign of symptoms is not recommended. Since most sinus infections are viral, try home remedies first.

Only if the symptoms persist for more than seven days, a visit to the doctor may be worthwhile. This will not only save you money but also the agony of waiting for hours before you get seen by the doctor.

EmpowHer

Potential Antibiotics Alternative to Treat Infection Without Resistance

Potential Antibiotics Alternative to Treat Infection Without Resistance

Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog | Thursday, February 23, 2012

Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a potential alternative to conventional antibiotics that could fight infection with a reduced risk of antibiotic resistance. Sadly Michigan is another school that is allowing work of those paid for by the citizens of Michigan to be lock away, only due to the wishes of an outdated journal business model instead of supporting open science. The Big Ten seems much more interested in athletic riches than in promoting science. The Big Ten should be ashamed of such anti knowledge behavior and require open science for their schools if they indeed value knowledge.

By using high-throughput screening of a library of small molecules, the team identified a class of compounds that significantly reduced the spread and severity of group A Streptococcus (GAS) bacteria in mice. Their work suggests that the compounds might have therapeutic value in the treatment of strep and similar infections in humans.

“The widespread occurrence of antibiotic resistance among human pathogens is a major public health problem,” said David Ginsburg, a faculty member at LSI, a professor of internal medicine, human genetics, and pediatrics at the U-M Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Ginsburg led a team that included Scott Larsen, research professor of medicinal chemistry and co-director of the Vahlteich Medicinal Chemistry Core at U-M’s College of Pharmacy, and Hongmin Sun, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

Work on this project is continuing at U-M and the University of Missouri, including the preparation of new compounds with improved potency and the filing of patents, Larsen said. Large research schools are also very interested in patents. That is ok, though seems to cloud the pursuit of knowledge too often when too large a focus is on dollars at many schools. But, it seems to put the schools primary focus on dollars; education seems to start to be a minor activity at some of these large schools.

Current antibiotics interfere with critical biological processes in the pathogen to kill it or stop its growth. But at the same time, stronger strains of the harmful bacteria can sometimes resist the treatment and flourish.

An alternate approach is to suppress the virulence of the infection but still allow the bacteria to grow, which means there is no strong selection for strains that are resistant to antibiotics. In a similar experiment at Harvard University, an anti-virulence strategy was successful in protecting mice from cholera.

About 700 million people have symptomatic group A Streptococcus infections around the world each year, and the infection can be fatal. Most doctors prescribe penicillin. The newly identified compounds could work with conventional antibiotics and result in more effective treatment.

ECNMag.com