Quote:
Originally Posted by Alphagamuga
I was reading about this yesterday.
I've got a science/health question, but I may have so angered AKAMonet that she may never speak to me again after the thread about naming kids.
I think the stat. in the story was that one in four of the cases no longer response to the old drug that we'd been using from the 1980s. So doctors are being directed to use a new treatment.
Why don't we still use the drug that does work for 75% of the people, and only go to the new drug in the cases of people from whom the first drug didn't work?
Is the problem with using the same medicine that works for three fourths of the people that is somehow "helps" develop more drug resistant strains? How?
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A Dr. always remains objective and does not take disagreements personally... Physicians have to do residency and rounds where they get "immunized" to being demeaned by Chief Residents. Wherease, Ph.D.'s, like me, in graduate school are contantly bombarded with being defacated on with experimental logic by professors and other scientists. You should see the stuff is top tiered journals and how Nobel Laureates clown other scientists. So, I get over it if I start taking things personally-takes me awhile, but I do get over it.
To answer your question, that is exactly what they do. There is a first line of treatment. If that doesn't work, then they give a second line of treatment. What is in the "arsenal" is the the last line of treatment which is "vancomycin". If that doesn't work, then you are pretty much assed out...
As to why a bug becomes resistant to all the drugs is under intense research scrutiny. But since last year's congress as well as the President cut the NIH budget in half, then not too much research is happening in that field. Hayle, for bioterrorism it is, but that's thru the defense department. So, no, they are not going to find cures for dangerous diseases. It's kinna like "V for Vendetta"...
Anyhow, as I understand it, a bug changes "virulence" because of genetic adaptation, I think. Most bacteria (as well as viruses) have a high rate of mutation. Eventually, it gets to the genes that control virulence and resistance. Once they become mutated, the bug changes "behavior" and the antibiotic no longer works. The general mechanisms where I got my Master's of Molecular Biology was through a "Multi Drug Resistance" and "pumping out of the bug". Others are changing the Operator of the Origin of Replication. But I have not kept up with that literature in a long time.
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