Wash Away Dangerous Germs

Nurses wearing gloves sprinkled them with glow-in-the-dark powder and went about their work. In the dark, they could see the powder ended up everywhere, including on their faces, the same way germs spread.

     As the number of world travelers increases, so does the opportunity for diseases to travel from people and hospitals in one country to another. Superbugs with super names, like methlcillin-resistant Straphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), are most dangerous. They resist the antibiotics that usually can cure bacterial infections in wounds, blood, and the gut, for example.

     Using antibiotics to cure a virus, such as coronavirus, known as COVID-19, is actually harmful. Not only are they ineffective against viruses, but they also help build up resistance to the best drugs for fighting bacterial infections.

     Viruses are extremely tiny. They consist of a packet of DNA or RNA messengers within a protein and fatty-like envelope that does not dissolve in water. Some viruses, such as COVID-19, include spikes able to fasten themselves to living human, animal, and plant cells. Although viruses cannot exist outside a living host cell, once their chemical compounds penetrate and infect a cell, they compromise the cell's immune system. Unless an antiviral drug stops them, virus-infected cells can each reproduce a million copies ready to infect more hosts.
 
     It is all too easy for children (and adults) to transfer germs that can remain harmless on skin and around nostrils into their noses and mouths where they cause disease. Prevention can be relatively easy, if hand sanitizers are accessible in handy locations. Children who are around animals especially need to wash their hands, and even doctors need to be reminded of the need to wash their hands between routine patient contacts.

     Earlier posts stress the importance of reducing resistance to antibiotics by using these drugs sparingly. See "Global Search for New Antibiotics" and "Diseases and Cures Travel the Globe."

Diseases and Cures Travel the Globe

Relatives and teachers need to keep up with findings about diseases in order to protect children. On the other hand, older students can begin to see career opportunities for themselves in medical and medical-related fields, including in the area of bioethics.

Tropical Diseases

Africa is breaking the grip of tropical diseases thanks to a coalition of aid agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and charities that formed Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDS). Health programs in individual countries and radio programs where experts and patients answer questions about treatments and dispel misconceptions also do their part.
     In Sierra Leone, for example, a country once ravished by Ebola, health workers visit villages once a year to provide everyone at risk with drugs for four diseases:

• Elephantiases (lymphatic filariasis). Microscopic worms infest the body and cause extreme irreversible swelling and damage.
• River blindness (onchocerciasis). Blindness caused by black fly bites and worms infecting the body.
• Snail fever (schistosomiasis). Parasitic worm infection that destroys kidneys and the liver.
• (Helminths) Roundworms in soil cause infections that stunt growth and physical development.

By treating all family members with all four drugs at once, Sierra Leone saves money on multiple visits and prevents families from passing diseases to one another.

     Mosquitoes continue to be the ones that transmit malaria, dengue fever, and Zika in tropical areas. In warm, wet weather, they mature faster and become infectious sooner. But even in warm, dry conditions, they find ways to survive underground in storm drains and sewers. In Singapore on a small scale, Trendwatching.com reports innovative pots, decorated with paint infused with the non-toxic mosquito repellent, permethrin, are used to kill mosquitoes trying to survive in water collected in plant pots. (Use keywords, mosquitoes, malaria, dengue, and Zika, to find earlier posts on these subjects.)

Polio

News that polio is staging a comeback in some parts of the world recalls disturbing memories from my childhood. Paralysis from polio required President Franklin Roosevelt to wear leg braces, a neighbor to live in an iron lung, and a playmate to compensate for her withered left arm. When Jonas Salk's polio vaccine became available in the 1960s, we all rushed to take it on sugar cubes.
     Normally, the polio vaccine that carries a live, weakened virus breeds in the recipient's intestines and enters the bloodstream to cause a lifelong protective immune response. But occasionally, once in every 17 million vaccinations, the weakened virus mutates and causes a new strain that can live in poop for six to eight weeks following an innoculation. In countries that lack clean water, adequate toilets, and treatment for sewage, polio is transmitted by drinking water carrying the mutated virus. That seems to be what has happened to cause cases of polio in Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

HIV/AIDS and STDs

Ever since the International AIDS Society (IAS) established a 90-90-90 goal in 2014, countries have aimed to make sure 90% of their population knows they have the disease, 90% of those are taking antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and virus levels in 90% taking ARVs are negligible. Worldwide, only a 75-79-81 goal is reached.
      In less developed countries, HIV is combated by circumcising male foreskins to remove HIV-breeding cells and by paying school tuition for girls who are less susceptible to exchanging sex for food and other benefits, if they have employable skills. In all countries, HIV prevention responds to a combination of two ARVs, tenofovir and emtricitabine found in Truvada. Prevention still depends on those at risk coming forward and governments willing to help pay for treatment.
     After being raised and educated in Europe, Dr. Agnes Binagwano began returning to Rwanda with suitcases filled with medical supplies. Working with the government, she began an HIV program and trained health workers to visit villagers in their homes. To build trust for Rwanda's health care program, villagers chose the health workers who care for them.Once the country with the worst child mortality rate, 97% of Rwanda's infants now are vaccinated. The country where genocide killed nearly one million in 1994 also has the University of Global Health Equity in Kigali, rural health centers, and a nationwide health insurance program.
     Still a problem, ARVs give gay and bisexual men a false impression that these drugs prevent all sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). And birth control pills and other forms of female contraception give heterosexual couples the false impression male partners need not use condoms. Consequently, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea infections all are on the rise from unprotected sex. At the same time, testing has been hit by cuts in funding for preventive education, local health departments, and confidential clinics that cater to adolescents.

Gene Editing

Which human cells the CRISPR-Cas9 technique edits and the changes made promise to treat diseases when engineered cells return to a patient's body. While unintended consequences of CRISPR-Cas9 editing to improve agricultural crops are less of a concern, the studies that find some forms of CRISPR-Cas9 editing delete or rearrange strings of DNA, affect non-targeted genes, and might cause cancer in humans motivate the search for technological techniques that produce only intended results.
     Genetic engineering capable of removing hereditary predispositions to cancer would, of course,be valuable. Editing into humans destructive hereditary traits passed along to future generations would not.
     Based on the way viruses can penetrate bacteria cells and destroy their defenses, CRISPR editing also is involved in the search for a way to k(ll superbugs resistant to antibiotics. (Use the keywords, antibiotics and CRISPR, to see earlier posts on these subjects.)

Cellphone Radiation

Research continues to study the danger of cellphone radiation from phones and antennas. Emissions from decaying lithium batteries, which remind me of those from black holes, also seem to indicate possible health risks. Keep an eye on findings about brain damage and memory loss from long term studies of new 5G technology. 

Babies Helped with Unused Vojta Therapy

Using the Vojta (YOY-tuh) method, developed by the Czech neurologist, Vaclav Vojta, in the early 1950s, pressure applied to nine zones of a baby's body can activate muscles, mental activity, and proper breathing in those born with the motor disabilities associated with cerebral palsy and Down's syndrome.

     One medical book describes Down's syndrome as a birth defect of Mongoloid children who have "stubby fingers and hands, a flat face, slanted eyes and a sweet disposition." The book goes on to say, "Mongolism can usually be detected by sampling the amniotic fluid so that an abortion can be performed if the fetus is affected."

     Why would doctors skip to an abortion, when the development of a baby with a sweet disposition could be helped by the Vojta method, used, not only in the Czech Republic, but also in Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, India, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Syria?

     A Vojta therapist at the Jubilee Mission Medical College and Research Institute in Thrissur, India,
suggests the therapy is not widely used, because there is no profit payoff. Once parents are trained, they perform the pressure therapy regularly at home with no equipment or drugs. Perhaps, there also is another answer. As in the case of blue light phototherapy found to destroy the superbugs that resist the antibiotics used to kill staph infections, Western doctors discounted research on the Vojta method conducted in a country behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War (See the earlier post, "Medical Profession Suffers from International Conflict.")

     Since the successful reduction of motor problems depends on how early the Vojta treatment begins and how efficiently it is applied, there should be no delay in trying this therapy in every country. After undergoing treatment before a baby turns 1 year old, although there is no cure for the underlying medical defects, speech problems and a delay in crawling and walking can be overcome. Most Vojta-treated children can learn to speak and walk.

   

Bacteria Talk to Each Other

Although the mosquito-borne Zika disease is a virus, its spread draws attention to how quickly illnesses from viruses or bacteria can be carried throughout the world. As many have observed, walls cannot keep diseases from entering any country.

     Earlier posts, "Infection-Killing Bugs and Antibiotics" and "Global Search for New Antibiotics," have looked at various ideas for overcoming the growing resistance infections are showing to cures from existing antibiotics. Research by Helen E. Blackwell, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, adds to these findings.

     Blackwell has learned bacteria send chemical signals to each other. These signals can cause bacteria, which are simple, tiny organisms with short life spans, to sense a quorum, meaning to form a group big enough to infect an animal or help a plant.

     Once Blackwell discovered the communication properties of bacteria, she began tinkering with their signals in order to block their ability to cause infections. She also notes it could be possible to cause bacteria to start conversations that would do good things for their hosts.

     I was interested to read in The Guardian (November 20, 2015) that, not only can one person catch an infection from another, but Chinese scientists have discovered a gene in a ring of DNA that passes resistance to the antibiotic, colistin, along with bacterial infections. In other words, in this case, humans infected with bacteria from other humans also are infected with resistance to one particular antibiotic cure.

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.")

 

Infection-Killing Bugs and Antibiotics

Children who like to look under rocks for bugs (See the earlier blog post, "The Bees and the Birds.") have company in the scientific community that is searching for microbes to cure drug-resistant infections from bacteria and fungi in patients all over the world.

     According to an article by David Wahlberg in the Wisconsin State Journal (April 14, 2014), soil-based microbes produced miracle antibiotics after World War II. In Alexander McCall Smith's book, The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, for example, a character in Botswana, Africa, attributes cures to the kgaba plant. But recent soil-based research keeps rediscovering the same antibiotics.

     Consequently, kids can get in on the search for ants, beetles, bees, wasps, termites, sponges, and sea squirts that have found new microbes in bacteria that could act as antibiotics in humans.

     At the moment, the U.S. National Institutes of Health is funding a $16 million, five-year study to discover bugs, marine life, and other species that could help produce the drugs needed to treat staph and other infections. (An earlier blog post, "Medical Profession Suffers from International Conflict," tells how blue light phototherapy is being used to treat staph infections.) In January, 2015, the teixobactin antibiotic which has been shown to foil infection resistance passed animal tests without side effects.

     Young people interested in helping collect specimens or in doing a project involving the development of antibiotics from new microbes might get in touch with:
     Dr. David Andes, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Wisconsin
     Cameron Currie, a bacteriology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, who is doing research in Florida, Wisconsin, and possibly in Hawaii
     Tim Bugin, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, who is doing research in Puerto Rica and the Florida Keys.

     Also see the later posts, "Global Search for New Antibiotics" and "Bacteria Talk to Each Other."



   

Medical Profession Suffers from International Conflict

Dr. Chukuka Enwemeka, Dean of the University of Wisconsin's College of Health Sciences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has discovered phototherapy with blue light can destroy the super bug that prevents antibiotics from killing staph infections from methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Blue light has been shown to kill more than 90 percent of two strains of MRSA, and repeat treatments have killed 100 percent.

     According to Dr. Enwemeka, "phototherapy has been around for decades." Why has it taken until relatively recently for this therapy to be used more frequently? Western scientists were suspicious, Dr. Enwemeka said, because "Much of the research on phototherapy started in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War."