[HN Gopher] Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study
___________________________________________________________________
Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study
Author : charlieirish
Score : 223 points
Date : 2023-01-25 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I wonder if antidepressants protect your gut microbiome and the
| SSRI aspect is over stated. Would be very hard to disambiguate
| those two effects I suspect.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Good insight. I went through a profound burnout in 2019 after I
| lost my digestive health and got low serotonin due to a
| combination of work stress, overtraining at the gym,
| dehydration and a finger of booze after particularly hard days.
| Also food sensitivities to legumes, nightshades and almond
| butter, which I wasn't aware of at the time. I just learned
| that 25% of people who get food poisoning go on to develop IBS.
| Don't eat gas station sushi when you're on vacation!
|
| https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/article/the-food-poison...
|
| Ashwagandha basically restored my gut health in 3 months, in
| combination with psyllium husk capsules, kefir, and large plain
| lettuce salads with a vinegar-based dressing. My theory is that
| my cortisol levels got so high after decades of stress and
| negative reinforcement that I had symptoms like Cushing's
| syndrome. So ashwagandha mopped that up, which raises
| testosterone/estrogen and probably fixes a whole host of
| issues. But I never tested those levels, so take that with a
| grain of salt.
|
| I've experienced the connection between gut health and mood,
| now I do everything I can to stay in good shape. But I've
| noticed a resistance to this line of thinking, especially in
| older people who just want a pill from their doctor.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Yeah the gut microbiome is the next big thing for sure. It
| should be easy to study. Food logs, mood logs, medication logs,
| next generation sequencing and maybe some metabolic profiling
| and we should be able to find interesting correlations.
|
| I know my mood changes drastically down when I fail to eat
| properly for a period of time.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| As if omics research isn't hard enough, there's a confounding
| layer of privacy and incentive problems here.
|
| From a science angle it makes more sense to just collect this
| data from everybody all the time and let the studies be post
| hoc explorations of that giant dataset. But how do you get
| people to cooperate when they have reason to believe that the
| data will be used against them?
|
| Either we accept the diminished value of isolated study-at-a-
| time datasets (as we're doing now), we figure out how to do
| this kind of research through a layer of homeomorphic
| encryption which the layman trusts (a tall order), or we wait
| for an era with more trustworthy institutions (potentially a
| long time).
|
| For this reason, I think it'll be like fusion power: the
| perpetual "next big thing".
| Pilottwave wrote:
| give out equity to the study participants. I'll hand over
| data of you give me some equity on future ideas built on
| that data. l Like artists getting payed royalties.
| John23832 wrote:
| > Yeah the gut microbiome is the next big thing for sure. It
| should be easy to study.
|
| It won't be. We aren't able to culture most gut bacteria.
| Most die immediately in oxygen.
|
| The best we can do at the moment is correlation.
| nerdponx wrote:
| But SSRIs reverse depression symptoms, they don't prevent it
| from happening in the first place. so the mechanism would have
| to be not just protection but some kind of restoration or
| rebalancing, maybe by selectively protecting some bacteria but
| not others. That seems a little less plausible to me.
| tokai wrote:
| SSRIs do lower the risk of further depressive episodes.
|
| "To conclude, this review provides evidence that continuing
| SSRIs for 1 year reduces risk of MDD and relapse."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5761909/
| lr4444lr wrote:
| That was exactly my first thought. We could definitely throw
| the SSRI efficacy into doubt though by sampling CS fluid or
| something for actual serotonin content in cohorts who are
| subjectively feeling improved by SSRIs.
| NickM wrote:
| SSRI efficacy is already in doubt, as roughly 80% of the
| beneficial effects are replicated by placebos; some research
| has suggested that the remaining difference is due to the
| side effects, which make SSRIs active placebos and mess with
| study blinding.
|
| And, even if they are better than just an active placebo, the
| mechanism is probably not the effects on serotonin levels.
| (Discussed previously here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32160703)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| It would also explain why SSRIs take time to work - as I
| understand it the SSRI action is immediate and yet it takes
| weeks for people to notice the effects.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| SSRIs aren't the only medication that requires weeks to
| work.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I'm a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so scary.
|
| My layman understanding is that antibiotics gum up the mechanism
| to produce the cell wall.
|
| Sure, bacteria may develop where the mechanism works a bit
| differently and is not affected by a certain chemical. But it
| seems like "disrupt cell wall production" is a huge target and we
| could probably disrupt it in many other ways. Humans lack a cell
| wall entirely, so we "just" need to avoid side effects in some
| other system.
|
| Is the concern that studies to confirm lack of effects will take
| too long? Not that it's a difficult engineering challenge?
| Couldn't we be doing this research already, of finding other ways
| to disrupt the mechanism?
| John23832 wrote:
| > I'm a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so
| scary.
|
| It's scary because if you can't kill the bacteria, the bacteria
| kills you.
|
| --
|
| > My layman understanding is that antibiotics gum up the
| mechanism to produce the cell wall.
|
| This layman's idea is incorrect. Not all antibiotics work on
| cell walls. Not all bacteria have defined cell walls. Look up
| Mycoplasma.
|
| --
|
| > Is the concern that studies to confirm lack of effects will
| take too long? Not that it's a difficult engineering challenge?
| Couldn't we be doing this research already, of finding other
| ways to disrupt the mechanism?
|
| Most of the antibiotics we have were either found by accident,
| or computed derivatives of something that was found by
| accident. We've exhausted the low hanging fruit. More complex
| antibiotics often have bad side effects (ciprofloxacin) or are
| effective enough that we use them in the most guarded fashion
| to keep them in the chamber when needed (carbapenem
| derivations).
|
| --
|
| There's a metric crap ton of money going into the research of
| new antibiotics, it's just not straight forward.
| shagie wrote:
| > There's a metric crap ton of money going into the research
| of new antibiotics
|
| It's getting more attention, but its been faltering for a
| long time.
|
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and-
| business/antibi...
|
| > Venture capitalists are investing far less funds to develop
| new antibiotics than they are for oncology drugs, according
| to a new report that highlights the need for more financial
| incentives to fight off the growing threat of drug-resistant
| bacteria.
|
| > The report, published Monday by the Biotechnology
| Innovation Organization, found that investors are
| increasingly shying away from antibiotic research due in part
| to large companies exiting the space. That's left small
| companies, that typically rely on investment capital,
| struggling to carry out new clinical trials.
|
| > Newer antibiotics are more important than ever as the
| Covid-19 pandemic has forced people into hospitals for longer
| periods of time, increasing the chances for the spread of
| antibiotic-resistant germs, the biotech trade group said.
|
| > But in the past 10 years, venture capital funding for U.S.
| antibiotic development amounted to $1.6 billion, compared to
| $26.5 billion for oncology, according to Monday's report. The
| group noted that there are currently 64 new antibacterial
| therapeutics in the clinical trial pipeline, 80% of which
| originated from small companies.
|
| The report mentioned is The State of Innovation in
| Antibacterial Therapeutics -
| https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/BIO-
| Antibact...
| toast0 wrote:
| > I'm a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so
| scary.
|
| Because it can makes otherwise simple to treat bacterial
| infections into an ICU stay. ICUs don't have a lot of spare
| capacity, and it's difficult to add more.
| make3 wrote:
| the products that both attacks the bacterias & are perfectly
| safe are probably very very hard to find, right. the product
| needs to be safe to flood your whole system with, because
| that's how pills work, you eat it and it diffuses everywhere in
| your system, there is zero targeting. Plus ideally it should
| kill all the bacterias very fast so none can develop
| resistance. it seems like it would be an incredibly hard
| balance.
| Calavar wrote:
| This is a very good question. The practical issues with
| antibiotic resistance may not be that obvious to a layperson
| because they tend to pop up in the hospital setting as opposed
| to the clinic setting that most people are familiar with.
|
| The antibiotic bottleneck centers around patients who show up
| to the hospital with very vague signs of infection (fever,
| sweats, rigors, lethargy, etc.) and are _sick_. Like on the
| verge of going to the ICU sick. Or already in the ICU sick.
| These people need an effective antibiotic and they need one
| fast. You don 't have the luxury of sending a culture to the
| lab and waiting for the antibiotic susceptibility profile to
| come back because that can take multiple days. So you need a
| toolbelt of "broad spectrum" antibiotics that are highly
| effective against the dozen or so bacteria that are the most
| common culprits of serious infection - something that you can
| use in the critical first 48 hours, while you're still waiting
| for culture results.
|
| In practice (at least in the US), your selection of broad
| spectrum antibiotics is limited to vancomycin plus either
| cefepime or combination piperacillin/tazobactam. That's it.
| There really aren't very many other antibiotics that are
| effective against a sufficiently wide range of bacteria. We do
| have "back up" antibiotics to use if those fail, but these are
| powerful agents that come with some really nasty side effects,
| like seizures (for carbapenems) or widespread muscle breakdown
| (for daptomycin). And they are pretty limited in number too.
|
| If vancomycin, cefepime, or piperacillin/tazobactam resistance
| starts to become a lot more common before the next generation
| of antibiotics comes in, we're screwed. And antibiotic
| development has been stuck in a rut for decades.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _In bacteria grown in well-oxygenated laboratory conditions,
| the antidepressants caused the cells to generate reactive oxygen
| species: toxic molecules that activated the microbe's defence
| mechanisms._ [ ... ]
|
| > _However, in bacteria grown in anaerobic conditions, levels of
| reactive oxygen species were much lower and antibiotic resistance
| developed much more slowly._ [ ... ]
|
| > _But in healthy humans, E. coli is found mainly in the large
| intestine, where conditions are anaerobic, meaning that the
| process described in the paper might not occur at the same rate
| in people, says Maier._
|
| So the study shows that antidepressants help bacteria resist
| antibiotics if you test in oxygen-rich conditions. But that
| doesn't match conditions in the human body, so this may not even
| be relevant to humans.
|
| Their next step is to study it in mice, which makes sense, but to
| me it seems like you can't conclude much right now.
| malfist wrote:
| This seems a really week connection.
|
| > In bacteria grown in well-oxygenated laboratory conditions, the
| antidepressants caused the cells to generate reactive oxygen
| species: toxic molecules that activated the microbe's defence
| mechanisms. Most prominently, this activated the bacteria's
| efflux pump systems, a general expulsion system that many
| bacteria use to eliminate various molecules, including
| antibiotics. This probably explains how the bacteria could
| withstand the antibiotics without having specific resistance
| genes.
|
| So the study was:
|
| * Done in a petri dish
|
| * Done in an environment dissimilar to the human body
|
| * Showed an adaptation to the environment unrelated to antibiotic
| resistance
|
| Showing adaptation "efflux pumps" for oxygen removal and claiming
| it's applicable to antibiotics seems like claiming yoga mats are
| made from jet fuel because they both contain water.
|
| It would be really interesting if they tested a null here which I
| don't see noted anywhere. If the adaptation happened in the
| oxygen rich environment without the antibiotic it would indicate
| that antibiotics are not causal.
| cratermoon wrote:
| This article mentions that a study was done in humans and found
| no effect. https://english.elpais.com/science-
| tech/2023-01-24/study-sug...
| psychphysic wrote:
| It seems the mechanism is general enough that green tea, spices
| that are lauded for harming bacteria might be making them more
| virulent
| wasjosh wrote:
| How is something 3 or 4 on the front page here thats been known
| since the 40s?
| chucksmash wrote:
| Article is about _non-antibiotic_ medications contributing to
| antibiotic resistance. Has that been known?
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I work with a bunch of researchers and physicians on
| antibiotic resistance every day and I had no idea (though tbf
| I'm just the "computer guy" here)
| peteradio wrote:
| Probably helps the bugs deal with their existential dread of
| trying to do battle inside of a body doped to kill them.
| tokai wrote:
| Interesting and potentially dangerous. But as long as many
| millions of pigs are covered in antibiotic foam (which is just
| rinsed off into the drain), I'm not gonna lie sleepless over
| this. Resistant bacteria will cause humanity huge troubles if we
| don't manage to do something radical soon.
| Ovah wrote:
| Is there any evidence that antibiotic resistance in any
| significant way crosses from livestock pathogens to human
| pathogens? I had a medical professor lecturing a couple years
| back saying it was basically a myth.
| grammers wrote:
| Exactly. And as long as antibiotics are produced in factories
| where the left overs are just sent into the drain as well (see
| India, China), anything else it just a tip of the iceberg. We
| need _true_ emergency antibiotics - not once that are produced
| the way they are produced and not once that can still be used
| for animals.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| The answer is phages. But last time I went into the rabbit hole
| the TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in
| it. And everyone needs a different phages cocktail. I sleep at
| night knowing that push come to shove someone will step in and
| mass produce machines to create personal phage cocktails.
| abeppu wrote:
| > I sleep at night knowing that push come to shove someone
| will step in and mass produce machines to create personal
| phage cocktails.
|
| Drug resistant bacteria are here. Hasn't push already come to
| shove?
|
| Phages are interesting, but given that there are substantial
| challenges on the road to making and administering them (and
| you can be in a race against the clock as someone's infection
| progresses), shouldn't we also be trying to use existing
| antibiotics far more strategically?
| efields wrote:
| Is the implication here that antibiotics are more
| commercially viable, but phages are the real solution? I'm
| unfamiliar with phages, but a quick lookup revealed "virus
| that eats bacteria" and it's like, yeah... let's do that to
| combat bacterial infections. I'm guessing alignment between
| phage/bacteria is crucial.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but what I got was that
| there's nothing to patent because phages are found in
| sewers and mud pools as is. Also every individual with a
| bacterial infection needs a custom cocktail so there's no
| one-size-fits-all pill that can be mass produced.
|
| Phages also have their own caveats but I don't remember
| what it is. The TLDR is that in the worst case scenario we
| still have phages and as far as I understand no bacteria
| can adapt to phages. But we need to figure out a way to
| make it commercially viable as you put it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| As someone who knows nothing about biology, this as well
| as the limited shelf-life issue mentioned in other
| comments makes me wonder if something like "A collection
| of less specialized phages and a process by which they
| can be quickly programmed to go after a bacteria" could
| be patented.
|
| I'm sure this is dumb because if it wasn't somebody would
| have done it by now, though.
| ronsor wrote:
| Sounds like the solution is to kill patents so they can
| forget about money entirely.
| [deleted]
| importantbrian wrote:
| Whenever someone says that the reason some health related
| thing isn't being used because it's not patentable and
| there's no money in it it's a pretty sure signal they don't
| know what they're talking about. Therapy methods,
| manufacturing methods, etc. are all patentable. As an example
| here is a patent that was granted around methods for
| selecting bacteriophages against specific bacteria [1]. If
| you search patent records for phage therapy there are tons of
| granted patents.
|
| The original patent for insulin was given away by it's
| discoverers because they wanted everyone to be able to have
| access to inexpensive insulin. That hasn't stopped pharma
| companies from coming up with patents around formulations,
| manufacturing methods, delivery methods, etc. and making tons
| of money off of insulin.
|
| Sibling comments have pointed out the real reasons it's not
| commonly used despite the promise. I just wanted to point out
| not being able to patent something is almost never a barrier
| for pharmaceutical companies if they think they can come up
| with a profitable therapeutic.
|
| [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10357522B2/en?q=phage
| +th...
| John23832 wrote:
| Phages are not the silver bullet that people think they are.
|
| First they're difficult to make and store (antibiotics are
| mostly shelf stable... phages aren't). Second, they are not
| broad spectrum. Third, (at least in the US) phage therapy
| hasn't taken off because the initial forays into phages
| showed that they can cause reactions. Lastly, not all
| bacteria have phage counterparts.
|
| So if you even could use phages, you're looking at weeks of
| testing to determine what bacteria to target, before
| production. You could keep a library of phages for known
| bacteria, but that library would be highly specific.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| They're highly specific, and are harder to administer.
| They're usually stored in glass phials which need to be
| kept in a refrigerator. Stomach acid needs to be
| neutralized if they're taken orally. If administered by
| injection, the strain used can only be used once as the
| body develops antibodies to it. Most of the scientific
| literature on them is in either Georgian or (if you're
| lucky) Russian.
|
| They're not without their problems, but there are also
| problems with antibiotics (bacterial resistance, penicillin
| allergy). So why not use them whenever use of antibiotics
| is problematic? They're cheap, and reproduce at a
| phenomenal rate. They were used successfully in the Soviet
| Union, and are still being used in Georgia.
| John23832 wrote:
| I'm not saying that they can't be used. They can. People
| often take new(ish) tech as a cure-all.
|
| There are still challenges though.
|
| For bacteria with high resistance (which is what we have
| the biggest issue with), we've typically done a workup of
| the bacterium to target. In the worst case, these are
| what land people in the hospital. Hospital settings would
| be the best administration point for these therapies. The
| problem would still be the creation of the specific
| phages in a reasonable fashion. This would only really be
| available at major hospitals in major cities. And so...
| limited in usage.
|
| I could see major hospitals keeping a large amount of
| gonococcal phages on hand though.
|
| Edit::
|
| One more thing. As far as antibiotic allergies (you
| mentioned beta lactams) we typically have antibiotic
| alternatives. Doxycycline is pretty much well tolerated
| by everyone. And it's available in pill form.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Isnt it that phages can be engeneered to a specific
| bacteria? Also the other way around. The can be programmed
| with the dna of the bacteria. So pcr the bacteria then make
| phages that atack them. My knowledge is bad . Could you
| elaborate where the engeneering problem is and the cost
| factors? Thanks
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| They're numerous and widespread, so it should be possible
| to find the phage you want. If bacteria evolve to develop
| resistance to it, bacteriophage can evolve to overcome
| that resistance.
| John23832 wrote:
| The problem is that they are highly specific. You would
| need the industrial machinery to manufacture a highly
| specific treatment. With anything in medicine/biology,
| specificity dramatically increases cost.
|
| There's also the pre-treatment testing that would be
| necessary to determine what to target. There's also the
| shipment of a bacterial specimen that would be used to
| create a phage (which is something we don't do
| currently... we'll ship a specimen to a testing center,
| best case). Those are two different bacterial specimens
| needed. Then you have to ship the phages back. Alive.
| Then store and administer then properly. People fail to
| take their antibiotics properly. They're going to royally
| screw up phages.
|
| What about bacteria that you can't culture (treponema
| pallidum, aka syphilis)?
|
| All of this is in contrast to antibiotics. Is it gram
| positive or gram negative? Treat. Did it work? Yes, good.
| No, treat again. Did it work? Yes, good. No, test for
| resistance. Move to a stronger antibiotic and repeat.
|
| You really don't even need to know what the exact
| bacteria is that you're targeting with antibiotics.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Thank you very much. I google a bit and here in germany
| we are allready building a database and a stock of phagea
| for specific bacteria. They allready have over 1000
| phages. They also have ,,phage cocktails" for broadband.
| They also state your points. Thanks again. Here the link
| in german
|
| https://www.dsmz.de/press/press-
| releases/singleview/zertifiz...
|
| And this video is rly interesting
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3tsmFsrOg
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Viruses are generally extremely well preserved as long as
| you deep freeze them.
| [deleted]
| omginternets wrote:
| >TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in
| it.
|
| I think you are overlooking some of the major technical
| problems with phages. In no particular order:
|
| 1. The immune system develops antibodies for many phages.
|
| 2. Microbes develop resistance to phages.
|
| 3. Phage multiplication using host cell is a primary step for
| phage production, and this causes many (serious) adverse
| effects.
|
| 4. Only obligate lytic phages that lyse the bacterial cell
| directly instead of integrating its genome in bacterial DNA
| (temperate) are usable for phage therapy. Temperate phages
| play a major role in the exchange of genetic material between
| different bacterial strains and often contribute to the
| pathogenicity.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| Could someone explain this to me like I'm 5?
| meindnoch wrote:
| phages = bacteriophages = viruses that kill bacteria [1]
|
| There's an arms race between bacteria and humans: bacteria
| infect humans - humans develop antibiotics to kill bacteria
| - bacteria evolves resistance against antibiotics - humans
| develop new antibiotics to kill resistant bacteria -
| bacteria evolves resistance to new antibiotics - ...
|
| Developing more and more new antibiotics for resistant
| bacteria is slow and expensive. Bacteriophages (viruses
| that infect bacteria) on the other hand would naturally
| evolve with the bacteria, like how COVID evolved new
| strains in response to our vaccines.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Not just higher life is plagued by viruses, bacteria as
| well. And bacteriophages are viruses that only target
| specific bacteria.
|
| They are among the most abundant "forms of life" in the
| whole world, as google details:
|
| > There are up to ten times more phages in the oceans than
| there are bacteria, reaching levels of 250 million
| bacteriophages per millilitre of seawater.
|
| If we were able to quickly find the right phage for
| bacteria that causes infection, that bacteria would have no
| chance. And we do know that for every bacteria there would
| be infinite phage variants they just can not defend
| themselves against by design. From what we know bacteria,
| all life in general will always stay vulnerable to viruses.
|
| The problem is that our science on finding, producing and
| using bacteriophages is extremely limited for technical and
| financial reasons.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| There's always a virus out there that can kill a
| bacteria. Or, we can just engineer one to kill a
| bacteria.
|
| It's just... really hard, takes weeks to months (if
| you're engineering, and then it's GMO, which is another
| can of regulatory worms).
|
| It's not even expensive; we just use regular lab
| equipment. But people are doing lot of things by hand
| today. But we're finding ways to scale up and insert
| robots like OpenTrons and Singer!
|
| > extremely limited for technical and financial reasons
|
| The severance packages of each tech layoffs is more than
| what our entire field gets every year in funding.
| hfsh wrote:
| > by design
|
| Yeah, no. Quite the opposite in fact.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| All I wanted to say here was: Anything infectable by a
| virus can not become immune to viruses as a whole. There
| is always a new virus variant/mutation out there, or
| possible to come into existence, that kills the bacteria.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >Not just higher life is plagued by viruses, bacteria as
| well. And bacteriophages are viruses that only target
| specific bacteria.
|
| And not even viruses are safe from viruses:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virophage
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I didn't know. Ridiculous nonsense like that makes a
| somewhat intelligent, playful, curious designer of life a
| possibility to me...
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Yay another phage thread!
|
| Phages do work, and we've treated a small bunch of people at
| Phage Australia for our clinical trial.
|
| There's a few things about using phages for treatments I
| think everyone should be aware of:
|
| (1) phages work!! The physicians we work with (and ourselves)
| are surprised every time they work. It's just really labor
| and time-intensive.
|
| (2) if antibiotics are "bite sized snacks" then phages are
| like "getting a personalized chef - a course of phages should
| be highly personalized to the pathogens causing trouble, and
| sometimes the antibiotics. Too generic and it won't work. Too
| personalized and it's too expensive. Tricky balance. We're
| collecting data and trying to figure out what that balance
| is. Every patient is very different though and it's hard to
| draw conclusions and see patterns.
|
| (3) at Phage Australia we're not doing the cocktail approach
| -- we're (trying to) assembling a library of phages that
| should be able to cover lots of common pathogens and local
| outbreaks. We work with antibiotic resistance reference labs
| and hopefully eventually get enough coverage, by building a
| library of phages that we can mix and match before we get an
| inquiry. The TGA is onboard with this. (The FDA is looking
| into this tentatively; look up Adaptive Phage Therapeutics).
| The kind of phage therapy we're looking at is closer to CAR
| T-cell therapy, FMT and other kinds of individual /
| personalized therapies.
|
| tl;dr: Phages work, but getting them and getting/paying for
| them is more like a service and less like a pill. It's also
| very expensive and hard to do today. We to work with
| regulators to push more personalized therapies. The age of
| generic pills in a bottle is slowly fading away.
|
| (Source: I'm the "computer person" aka research software
| engineer on the Phage Australia clinical trial)
| dmix wrote:
| I'm curious what drives customers to these services. Why
| would someone want to pay for a customized phage service?
| Someone who is taking lots of antibiotics or concerned
| about them?
| [deleted]
| importantbrian wrote:
| No OP, but my guess would be people who have drug
| resistant bacterial infections and don't have another
| option.
| krautt wrote:
| Their dna sees our over=stressed modern lifestyles as an
| opportunity. shouldn't surprise us i guess.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Fascinating, the idea is that by inducing a stress response
| bacteria are virilized in a sense.
|
| It's interesting they picked antidepressants to do so but the
| logic should apply to many substances people like to kill bugs
|
| Like green tea and spices which hinder bacteria should also make
| them resistant to antibiotics.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is there any way that this could be how they help with depression
| - there's a lot of research now about various good bacteria
| affecting your mental well being - and we are living in a soup of
| antibiotics
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics, hormones,
| and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer and other
| (cough cough) disorders in the same way big oil knew that it was
| contributing to/causing global warming.
|
| Every person in the comments across the internet saying the rise
| in all of these disorders was just about self-reporting have been
| unknowingly shilling for big food.
|
| Being anti conspiracy and overly trusting of certain (cough
| cough) fields of science denotes an inability to rationalize.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics,
| hormones, and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer
| and other (cough cough) disorders in the same way big oil knew
| that it was contributing to/causing global warming.
|
| I feel like 2 out of these 3 are not like the other (i.e.
| pesticides are by definition usually pretty toxic and hormones
| can mess up living things in all sorts of ways). And even then
| you need to get more specific than the broad groups to say
| anything intelligent about them.
|
| > Being anti conspiracy and overly trusting of certain (cough
| cough) fields of science denotes an inability to rationalize.
|
| First step to being rationale is to be able to talk about it.
| You wont even say which field of science you don't like. Is it
| biology in general?
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| [dead]
| yucky wrote:
| It sounds like you're saying the government has completely shit
| the bed in their regulatory duties, but I don't see you assign
| blame there at all for some reason.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| That is completely fair. But I'm not going to act like there
| aren't thousands of scientists and business people who are
| 100% aware of what is going on. Many of whom work jobs whose
| PURPOSE is to destroy the effectiveness of the government.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| That last sentence is often used to criticize economics but
| haven't heard it on harder "sciences" before.
| dysoco wrote:
| Not to diss on OP's comment, but out of context it sounds
| exactly like what COVID deniers usually say.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| it's remarkable how little time it took for the big pharma
| to become our greatest ally
| frereubu wrote:
| That's exactly what I took from "(cough cough) disorders".
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Cough cough was not a respiratory reference. I simply am
| not going to stir up the pot by directly mentioning the
| fields that are corrupt or the specific disorders.
| throwanem wrote:
| Why should anyone take you seriously when you openly
| admit lacking the courage of your convictions?
| eastbound wrote:
| Calls to courage are generally calls to fight weaker-
| against-stronger, even if the weaker is in the right. See
| also: Bullies always say "You don't have the balls to do
| this or that" or "You don't have the _courage_ to xyz".
|
| That doesn't mean you are right.
|
| Social sciences are such a bag of garbage thinly veiled
| on hating the very people that built everything that
| works correctly in this world that someone succeeded in
| passing chapters of Mein Kampf in papers published in 23
| journals, after replacing "jew" with "white male".
|
| And yet, if all women went on strike for a week, the
| world would spin just as right.
|
| Bring on your downvotes and your mockery, you can _bully_
| your way into being right all you want, I fully expect
| the "Bet you don't have a girlfriend ey?" because you
| wouldn't have the _courage_ to be scientifically correct
| and actually admit the garbage science that passes as
| legitimate for lawmakers.
|
| You might even not notice the contents and brush it
| singlehandedly with "See? You're upset _therefore you are
| false_ ".
|
| Mass bullying and science that gets put into law are a
| huge problem for science.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| The beauty if disinformation is that it includes nuggets of
| truth, or uses seemingly solid rational that is flawed in a
| very subtle way.
|
| I am a pro conspiracy theory person. But to be clear, there
| was a ton of disinformation around COVID, and this thread
| has nothing to do with COVID. I believe COVID is real, and
| that the vaccines were a good idea.
| richbell wrote:
| It's fairly common, if you're familiar with how big agro-
| chemical firms influence research into the harms of their
| products (lookup Oki's Weird Stories video about Syngenta and
| Tyrone Hayes), how Purdue influences academia and the medical
| industry, etc.
|
| Empirical evidence and data can be used to selectively
| deceive. Companies can run hundreds of trials and only select
| ones that showed favorable results.
| tekmate wrote:
| because it makes absolutely no sense here. what op is
| criticizing is on businesspeople lying to make more profit,
| not scientists
| idontpost wrote:
| > Being anti conspiracy and overly trusting of certain (cough
| cough) fields of science denotes an inability to rationalize.
|
| That's some word salad right there.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Fair criticism, not my cleanest rep. Will do better
| lazyfanatic wrote:
| once I know you have an agenda, I invalidate what you have to
| say.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Everyone has an agenda.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a corollary or a counterpoint to
| what you're trying to say here, but not all agendas are
| equivalent.
|
| One person's agenda might be to make as much money as
| possible irrespective of consequences. Another person's
| agenda might be to decrease asthma rates. The fact that
| both people have some kind of agenda is basically
| irrelevant.
|
| This is the same hole as in the classic "both sides"
| political attitude.
| debacle wrote:
| The Democrat party drummed up the "both sides" argument
| as cover for them turning their backs on the grassroots
| activism that got Barack Obama elected in 2008. In the
| same way, the modern focus on racial issues in the US is
| directly correlated with quelling the anti-classist
| Occupy movement.
|
| The lesser of two evils is still evil.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Source? Those are strong claims. I'm cynical enough to
| find them plausible, but they're strong enough that I'm
| not willing to take them for granted.
| standardUser wrote:
| Generous of you to think it's "unknowingly". There is a strange
| phenomenon online where people rush to oppose things like basic
| animal welfare and improved food labelling or any other change
| to the food industry. I find it hard to swallow that there's so
| many regular people out there passionately defending the rights
| of corporations to torture animals and hide what's in their
| food in their free time.
| notamy wrote:
| > There is a strange phenomenon online where people rush to
| oppose things like basic animal welfare and improved food
| labelling or any other change to the food industry. I find it
| hard to swallow that there's so many regular people out there
| passionately defending the rights of corporations to torture
| animals and hide what's in their food in their free time.
|
| I am disabled. I cannot walk very well without an assistive
| device. I've noticed that, when you're disabled, the average
| person's level of caring about your disability extends right
| up until the point where you're even a mild inconvenience to
| them. And it's for any number of reasons: "you're faking it"
| "you're too young to have those issues" "it's bothersome to
| install a ramp for people in wheelchairs" "people's assistive
| devices (canes, walkers, ...) take up too much space" "you're
| too slow getting in/out of transportation" and the list goes
| on. I imagine it may at least in part be the bystander
| effect[0], but that doesn't explain people who can be
| actively malicious -- and that happens more often than you
| may think.
|
| The point of this anecdote is that I think something similar
| applies here. IMO people _do_ genuinely care about what's in
| their food / how it's produced... but then _they_ would have
| to change for the situation to improve. Suddenly it's an
| inconvenience to them. If the relative suffering of a
| disabled person isn't enough to convince someone that an
| inconvenience is worth it, then caring about a bunch of
| animals in a factory farm is just an abstract concern that
| they don't care about too much, but changing it is something
| they care about because it affects them.
|
| That's not to say that people are _selfish_, per se, or
| anything like that. There's only so much time in the day,
| life is busy for many people, social media demands attention,
| food costs and inflation and housing costs and ..., and many
| more are all issues that are a lot more immediate to people.
| It's hard to care about things that are mostly just abstract
| concepts you aren't exposed to, when you have much more
| meaningful day-to-day concerns.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
| phphphphp wrote:
| I'm just a layman so perhaps you're referring to some top
| secret scientist internet but here on the normal internet it
| has been drilled into me through comments for as long as I can
| remember that a large part of anti-biotic resistance is being
| developed because of animal agriculture and that _big food_ is
| responsible.
| [deleted]
| kranke155 wrote:
| Can you share sources, studies, be more specific ?
| [deleted]
| comboy wrote:
| Interesting tidbit is Bret Weinstein's finding how all mice
| used for drug testing all over the world were coming from a
| single source and because of how they were bred, they had
| very long telomeres which made them much less susceptible to
| cancer.
|
| Somebody got a Nobel for that, the situation supposedly has
| improved since, but a lot of assumptions (and substances
| approved) are still based on research which was using these
| mice.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > increased rates of cancer and other (cough cough) disorders
|
| Can someone translate dogwhistle to english here please?
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Assumed Covid, but hard to say.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| The cough cough is not a reference towards respiration. At
| this point, I wish I would have left it out.
|
| But there are a myriad of illnesses that have been linked to
| environmental pollutants and a very high number of people
| will get offended if you point it out. Because the science
| isn't settled yet. I'll let you fill in the blanks there.
| bawolff wrote:
| Oh what BS. If you are going to say something have the guts
| to say it. I honestly have no idea what disease you are
| referring to. Acne? Erictile dysfunction? Could be
| anything.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics,
| hormones, and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer
| and other (cough cough) disorders
|
| This may be true in specific cases... But surely isn't true in
| general.
|
| It's the role of science and government to find out _which_
| anti-biotics, _which_ hormones, and _which_ pesticides case
| increased rates of _which_ cancers.
|
| As soon as there is evidence suggesting a specific pesticide
| has downsides that outweigh the advantages, it's time for the
| government to promptly ban it.
|
| So far, I think the main failure in that process is that
| governments don't put enough money into science to find said
| evidence. Simply having a tax on biotech of say 1% to pay for
| independent scientists to do research would easily be enough to
| give us good evidence of the upsides/downsides of everything
| widely deployed.
| fithisux wrote:
| "It's the role of science and government to find out which
| anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case
| increased rates of which cancers."
|
| and until they find the answer these farms should be shut
| down
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _But surely isn 't true in general._
|
| Why not? Wealth-making attracts two kinds of people: those
| who are interested in mutually beneficial exchanges, and
| those who see trade as a zero- or negative-sum game. Research
| suggests these groups exist in a roughly 60:40 proportion to
| each other in human populations:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
|
| I do think your disagreement is sincere, since you propose
| allocating a tax on technological deployment to fund research
| and backing that up with strong regulation. But you overlook
| the phenomenon of regulatory capture by industry and bad-
| faith politicking. Just recently we saw how a regulator's
| observations about the surprisingly high negative
| externalities of gas stoves was quickly turned into a
| political football, pre-empting any meaningful policy
| discussion.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > So far, I think the main failure in that process is that
| governments don't put enough money into science to find said
| evidence.
|
| Couldn't agree more. The evidence of how ineffective the
| American scientific regulatory community is all around us.
|
| An easy example is how fast rising yeast impacts gluten
| intolerance, or how high fructose corn syrup impacts insulin
| resistance or glucose response. Highly negative correlations
| here, even from the advent, but the potential revenue has
| outweighed the desire to protect Americans.
|
| The truth is that American business sees citizens as two
| ways, suckers for making bad choices (while forcing those
| same choices down their throat), or simply unlucky. The rich
| avoid the obviously harmful aspects of America, while
| accepting the odds on the things they can't avoid.
|
| Personally if I were very wealthy I would spend very little
| time in the United States.
| airstrike wrote:
| _> It 's the role of science and government to find out which
| anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case
| increased rates of which cancers._
|
| Not if you subscribe to the precautionary principle
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
|
| _" The principle is often used by policy makers in
| situations where there is the possibility of harm from making
| a certain decision (e.g. taking a particular course of
| action) and conclusive evidence is not yet available. For
| example, a government may decide to limit or restrict the
| widespread release of a medicine or new technology until it
| has been thoroughly tested. The principle acknowledges that
| while the progress of science and technology has often
| brought great benefit to humanity, it has also contributed to
| the creation of new threats and risks. It implies that there
| is a social responsibility to protect the public from
| exposure to such harm, when scientific investigation has
| found a plausible risk. These protections should be relaxed
| only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound
| evidence that no harm will result."_
| jklinger410 wrote:
| But imagine how much revenue we'd be missing out on if
| every new invention that could shave a few cents off the
| bottom line had to be researched first?
|
| Just one of many brilliant decisions that the primarily
| white men who have ran this country throughout history made
| on behalf of all of us. Without our consent, of course.
|
| Good luck proving your dad's colon cancer was caused by
| industrial solvents in our water supply. Call your
| congressman! It's a democracy!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think it's more useful to look at this as a
| class/economic leverage issue, as selfishness and the use
| of administrative power to extract economic rents seems
| to be a universal phenomenon. 'White' as a proxy for the
| racialized dynamics of European colonialism is sometimes
| a convenient shorthand, but glosses over other important
| contexts like white being a symbol of monarchy, because
| the aristocratic class were not required to labor
| outdoors. This intraracial social marker was significant
| enough to appear in flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| White_flag#Ancien_R%C3%A9gime_...
|
| The 'white Russians' that fought against the 'red'
| communists carried the association of whiteness with
| traditional monarchy forwards into the 20th century and
| this revanchist monarchism continues to shape radical
| politics and factional identities in the present,
| although the symbolism is so diluted as to be
| unrecognizable to most:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement
|
| If we only look at 'white identities' in terms of racial
| coding, we fall into the trap of inadvertently
| criticizing people for a fact about themselves they
| didn't choose and can't change, and whose structural
| social privileges (vs those of non-European origin) are
| so unevenly distributed that the resulting intra-ethnic
| discontent has to be micromanaged through an elaborate
| ideological apparatus.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I assume you're being downvoted because of the
| unnecessary reference to "white men". The sentiment here
| is spot on, but really, this is one area where race
| doesn't matter much. There are plenty of white people
| suffering from this stuff as well. There's definitely
| some value in looking at this through a critical race
| theory lens, as with most issues in the USA, but in this
| case you might say that the CRT model has poor
| explanatory power.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| Better to have comprehensive information available about
| every aspect of our food supply so individuals can make
| decisions based on the science as it evolves and not have to
| wait for government action (which always comes last).
| nerdponx wrote:
| > It's the role of science and government to find out which
| anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case
| increased rates of which cancers.
|
| Not necessarily.
|
| One of several roles of government is to overcome
| coordination problems that would otherwise inhibit the
| production of public goods, such as new antibiotics and other
| better treatments for bacterial infections.
|
| Another role of government is to regulate markets by creating
| incentives in the form of laws and legal regulations. In this
| case, government could estimate the societal cost of
| agricultural antibiotic use, and then impose taxes on
| agricultural antibiotic use equal to the amount of that cost.
| if those costs turn out to be punitive, then tough shit,
| they'll need to figure it out. The proceeds from tax is
| levied could then be redirected to basic research as needed.
|
| Of course, this doesn't tend to work so well in practice due
| to any number of corruption and regulatory capture channels,
| so it tends to be easier to just ban harmful practices
| outright, which of course governments also have the power to
| do.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Indeed. Its amazing how people can still rationalize the
| existing situation and help defend corporate sociopathy after
| all the corporate scandals that were revealed over the last few
| decades in which the corporations did not stop short of
| outright murder for profit. Avandia drug scandal comes to
| mind...
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