UK's Medical Chief Warns of Antibiotic-Resistant Diseases
England's chief medical officer has raised the possibility of a "post-antibiotic" era wherein infections will become untreatable by antibiotics. Overuse of antibiotics for decades have mutated the germs into drug-resistant bacteria to the point that they no longer respond to medical treatment.
Dame Sally Davies cited the spread of untreatable strains of gonorrhea as well as the emergence resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) that do not respond to antibiotics. She warned that the deadly infections "know no borders" and can easily be transported from continent to continent by unsuspecting carriers.
Without radical action, the spread of disease can claim 10 million lives across the world by the middle of the century, prompting former chancellor George Osborne to warn the International Monetary Fund last year that the scenario poses a greater threat to mankind than cancer.
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Since the strain doesn't respond to the normal course of antibiotics, physicians have resorted to using two combined medicines, according to Daily Mail. However, the 67-year-old Davies observed that the bacteria are developing a resistance to the two drugs, and there are limited alternatives.
If this goes on, Davies warned: "we are going to have to go to the old-fashioned treatments which sound really nasty. You could do urethral irrigation when they used to put mercury and iodine into the bladder to wash out the germ." She also said, "Or you could try getting into a hotbox and getting heated to 43 degrees in the hope that would kill off the disease."
But there may still be hope. Researchers at University College of London found a potential new way to overcome antibiotic resistance using antibiotics that push hard enough into bacterial cells and extinguish them with "brute force." This breakthrough can help scientists find and create more effective medicines.
Lead author Dr. Joseph Ndieyira likened antibiotics to keys and bacterial cells to locks. When a bacterium becomes resistant to a drug, it effectively changes the locks, so the key won't fit anymore, he explained. The good news is that there are certain antibiotics that can force the lock to open.
