I remember years ago one of my employees had a child that had incessant ear infections. Always on antibiotics, until she reached the age of six, when she finally had an operation to repair the ear issue.
Continue reading Early Antibiotic Usage Affects Child Development
Did you ever run across something and think, “Damned. How come I didn’t think of that?” Here’s one of my recent revelations.
Oh, no, Roy. Another article about antibiotic resistance?
Continue reading A new protein yields resistance
We read almost every single week that a new drug has been developed to treat a chronic condition. And, the price tag for this pharmaceutical miracle is $ 400K, $ 1KK, or even $ 2KK. That’s the pot at the end of the rainbow that all of our pharmaceutical houses are seeking.
Continue reading The Dirty Secret About Antibiotic Resistance
Here’s a new wrinkle. Our antibiotics are compounds that interfere with bacterial cell wall production, membrane integrity, protein biosynthesis, and DNA synthesis. But, given our overuse (and incomplete drug regimens), the microbes we hope to kill have already developed resistance to the antibiotics in our arsenal.
Continue reading Let’s get MRSA!
I’ve written how we often discovered antibiotics. Simple. By sampling mud, ponds, habitats where microbes thrive and try to find the one strain that inhibits the growth of other microbes. Not a very efficient process- and one that provides less benefit now that we’ve discovered a slew of microbes. We just can’t seem to find a new one that works, to bolster our arsenal against disease.
I’ve written so many times about antibiotic resistance (among them yesterday) that you must get tired of it. Except, it is crucial that we have viable antibiotics to keep our population from succumbing to routine infections.
Continue reading Out of the box?
This is the first of a series of discussion on antibiotics. Enjoy.
Continue reading Come on, doc- just give me a pill
A computational biologist, Arnau Vich Vila, presented his PhD research at the United European Gastroenterology conference in Barcelona (October 2019). His paper, coauthored with his PhD advisor, Rinse K Weersma at the University Medical Center at Groningen, along with co-authors from Groningen (Netherlands), as well as from the Maastricht University Medical Center (also from the Netherlands) , discussed the effects of various drug categories on the patency of our gut microbiome.
Continue reading Hits you right in the gut
He was about the only scientist I knew that didn’t covet the Nobel Prize. Sure, he won every (ok, almost every) other honor (deservedly so) available- but still.
Continue reading Stanley Falkow, A”H