Emergence of drug resistance among pathogens is now a well recognized serious problem in medicine today. While several and varied reasons could be assigned to the emergence of drug resistant pathogens, the underlying fact is: on account of our belief that we have to get rid of pathogens only by killing them with antibiotic in order to save us from diseases, there has been blatant misuse of antibiotic creating the enormous problem of drug resistant pathogens. So if probably we can bring about a paradigm shift in our approach from aiming to eliminate the pathogens by killing them to alternative possibilities of dealing with them so that they can be eliminated without use of chemical toxins (antibiotics). This would probably be of great help in containing the problem
To prevent the development of the antibiotic resistance in bacteria
1. the use of higher generation of antibiotics should be restricted in rarest of rare cases
2.Antibiotics should be used only after recommended by the physicians
3. Combination of two different antibiotics prevent the development of drug resistance in bacteria
4
Bacteriovorus species are an alternative to antibiotics, and show great promise for the difficult problem of bacteria which have constructed biofilms to protect themselves.
See attached paper. I will post two more papers also.
Thanks for the references. This suggests that there are surely alternative means to deal with pathogens besides use of antibiotics. Actually in my personal experience, I have used strong antibiotics, NORFLOX-TZ(norfloxacin + tinidazole), for amoebiasis but it provided relief only during the period of treatment and would return once the medication is over. This indicates that the strain is most likely resistant to the antibiotic. However, with use of some medicinal diet, I found remarkable improvement in the condition. While it can not be concluded if the disease is permanantly cured, but there are no symptoms. I would rate the affect of medicinal diet far superior and better than the use of antibiotics in the present case. What it all means is that we need to make serious attempts to develop therapy and treatment beyond antibiotics for infectious diseases to address some of the challenging problems, such as adverse side effects on paitient, emergence of AB resistance in the pathogens etc.
Ashok--I will add an answer regarding plant pathogen control of disease without chemicals. In my lab we study non-pathogenic microbes of plants. We have observed that some of these non-pathogenic microbes (endophytes and epiphytes) associate with pathogenic fungi and reduce their virulence. I think a very similar phenomenon can be seen in the animal intestine--where a healthy intestinal microbiome prevents certain diseases. In a similar way we are exploring the potential to reduce diseases on plants through application of microbes that reduce virulence of pathogens. It is an interesting area of work. Jim White, Rutgers University
Jim, this sounds like a fantastic approach to try to control pathogens without using chemical toxins. While the resident microflora of human body definitely play significant role in not permitting non-resident microflora including pathogens to colonise and cause diseases, I am not sure if this area is being worked upon with an objective to use the concepts on microbial interactions in controlling human diseases. But surely, it may prove to be one of promising approaches in the development of non-antibiotic therapy for prevention and cure of infectious diseases.
I still think using bacteria to control bacteria (using bacteriovoruses)
has great (and safe) potential. See my previous posts and attachments.
I am NOT doing work on this and am thus not doing some self-promoting. I just think the bacteriovorus approach maybe very useful.
I do agree with you A. U. Daniels, it has a great potential. I will look at the references you have provided earlier to further educate myself on the issue. I do firmly believe that it would be possible to explore and develop therapies beyond use of antibiotics to control and treat infectious diseases.
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