Global Search for New Antibiotics

Throughout the world, as many as 700,000 people die from drug-resistant infections each year. Since so-called superbugs have become resistant to the antibiotics that have cured cholera, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other infections from bacteria since the 1940s, there is a two-pronged approach: 1) to reduce the overuse of antibiotics which reduce their effectiveness and 2) to find new antibiotics.

     Antibiotics can be overused unless hospitals monitor the incidence of antibiotic-resistant cases, pharmacists supervise use of antibiotics, and patients are not tested to see if their infections are bacterial or viral. On viruses, antibiotics are useless. Even when infections are caused by bacteria, conventional oral antibiotics, such as penicillin, need to be tried first to cure staph skin infections, C diff bacteria infections in the gut, bronchial infections, and urinary tract infections. Other treatments, such as more expensive daily shots and IV hookups in the hospital, need to be used sparingly and held back as a last line of defense.

     Since overuse of antibiotics contributes to their resistance, the antibiotics farmers use add to this overuse by humans through the food they eat. Because farmers have been using antibiotics as a way to stimulate faster growth of livestock and to prevent disease on factory farms where overcrowding spreads illnesses, under the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, proposed federal legislation would regulate antibiotic use on factory farms. A dozen or so manufacturers that produce antibiotics for livestock already have voluntarily agreed to change the directions on their labels to stipulate use for medicinal purposes not artificial growth.

      Once new FDA guidelines are implemented by January, 2017, a licensed veterinarian will have to supervise the use of antibiotics in livestock feed and water to treat and prevent disease and to promote growth. Since treatment of some diseases in cattle and dairy cows now requires low-level feeding of antibiotics, farmers and veterinarians are working to keep animals healthy with improved sanitation and nutrition as well as new vaccines. Pear and apple growers who spray trees to prevent bacterial blight infections also are looking for alternatives to the antibiotics now in use.

     Agricultural use of antibiotics, estimated to be 70% of all antibiotic use, has begun to cost farmers money. Denmark's ban on growth promoting animal antibiotics prevents beef imports from countries still using them. Since consumers are demanding meat and poultry free of routine antibiotic use, suppliers, such as Perdue, have stopped their use. While McDonald's plans to serve only antibiotic-free chicken in the US by the summer of 2017, consumers in other countries will not have this guarantee. Nowhere are McDonald's consumers guaranteed antibiotic free beef or pork.

     Since patients take antibiotics only for a short time, pharmaceutical companies have a greater incentive to develop other drugs rather than new antibiotics to replace the older ones that have lost their effectiveness. To stimulate research for new antibiotics, the National Institutes of Health's Center of Excellence for Translational Research (CETR) has put a $16 million grant behind the effort. When soil studies no longer uncovered new antibiotic microbes, researchers found new sources among ants, plants, and sponges in Florida, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. For example, the microbes in the milky white bacteria that cover some ants produce antibiotic compounds that fight different causes of infection. In the lab, scientists look for compounds with chemical structures that are different from known ones. Genomic sequencing of bacteria also helps determine whether they contain antibiotic-producing microbes. Using CETR grant money, a team of investigators headed by Dr. David Andes, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, and Cameron Currie, a University of Wisconsin bacteriology professor, have found 15 potential new antibiotics.

     On a side note, the following are three games that teach how viruses spread:
Pandemic is a tabletop game for four players who experience success and failure as they work together to stop the spread of diseases.
Plague, Inc. is an app game where players can see graphs of how lethal contagions are considering health care systems in various countries and global travel.
Pox: Save the People is a board game that uses blue vaccinated and red infected chips.

(This post amplifies information in the earlier post, "Infection-Killing Bugs and Antibiotics.")