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."

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.")

 

Introduction

Globalization came as a shock to the U.S. generation that won World War II and even to the Baby Boomers who followed. The current generation is different. International elements surround today's children from birth. Their first toys have tags showing that they were made in China, Thailand, or Malaysia. As youngsters, they may have attended Montessori schools that use methods developed by an Italian doctor or, under the influence of Japanese musician, Shinichi Suzuki, been gently nurtured to play an instrument. Long before leaving for junior years abroad, students expect to share classrooms and playgrounds with children whose heritages are Mexican, Nigerian, and Korean. Young people are growing up without a competitive edge in a world where democracy is not a shared goal. Their families work for multinational firms, complain about jobs outsourced to foreign companies, vacation where exchange rates provide the best value, or travel only as far as the price of Middle Eastern oil permits.

     National boundaries fail to shield today's children from the rest of the world's languages, religions, and drug traffickiing. Back in 1939, when isolationists were determined to keep the United States out of World War II, Senator Arthur Vandenberg thanked God for the protection of "two insulating oceans." Nowadays, neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific prevents global communication and terrorism from bringing the wide world home. When one billion people are international travelers every year, oceans no longer insulate anyone from tuberculosis or mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus. Neither can lines on a map limit where today's young people will work, the cultures they will share, nor the problems they will solve.

     Globalization requires an international, interconnected perspective. Children who have lived outside the country where they were born already may possess the cosmopolitan savvy to feel comfortable wherever they are plopped down in the world. But stay-at-home kids need not cede to their well traveled cohorts the feeling of being comfortable with foreign cultures, knowledge of world geography, the will to deal with environmental challenges, or decisions about war and peace. Teachers and parents now have access to resources at home and on the Internet that enable them to help young people acquire both a taste for what the world has to offer and confidence that they can contribute something to the world.

     My granddaughter's interest in Italy began with mythology. She knows everything about chimeras. These three-part lion, goat, and serpent creatures terrorized Asia Minor until a hero riding on Pegasus killed one. When my granddaughter learned there was a bronze chimera statue in Florence, that city became her dream destination. Although she has yet to travel outside the United States, she took me directly to a book store's language section and showed me the Italian workbook and interactive CD-ROM she wanted for her birthday. Mythology, art, and language combined to widen my granddaughter's view of the world. In a similar way, young athletes might develop their international perspective after watching the Olympics in London this summer. For other children, a foreign coin, a "Made in Bangladesh" clothing label, or a musical rainstick could stimulate interest in their world. This global awareness is what my blog is designed to foster.