Malaria drug may hit antibiotics

[[R_H]]

BBC

Widely used anti-malaria drugs may have an unwanted side-effect - decreasing the power of many antibiotics.

Remote South American rainforest villagers were found to carry bacteria resistant to antibiotics which had never been used there.

Canadian scientists believe the malaria drug chloroquine - chemically similar to the antibiotics - may have caused the problem.

The study was published in the Public Library of Science journal.

Antibiotic resistance is a major problem in Western countries, where strains of disease-causing bacteria such as Staphylococcus have adapted to beat some of the most commonly-used drugs.

However, for a resistant strain to develop, bacteria usually need to be exposed to the drug involved, or a drug similar to it.

The researchers from the Lakeridge Health Centre in Oshawa, Ontario, travelled to the remote rainforest regions of Guyana, in the north of the South American continent.

They took rectal swabs from more than 500 villagers, and checked the bacteria found, including E.coli and Salmonella, for their resistance to ciprofloxacin, one of the most commonly used antibiotics in the world.

They found more than 5% of the swabs had ciprofloxacin-resistant E.coli, which compares to the 4% found in US intensive care units where the drug is used intensively.

The degree of resistance found was so high that it was likely that other antibiotics in the same "family" as ciprofloxacin would also have been affected.

Malaria outbreak

Although antibiotics had not been used in these areas, anti-malarial drugs, particularly chloroquine, had been.

Ciprofloxacin is from a family of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, which are chemically related to chloroquine.

The theory of the Canadian team was that exposure to this, although effective at destroying the malaria parasite, created resistance in gut bacteria not only to chloroquine, but to the fluoroquinolones as well.

A widespread malaria outbreak a year before the tests meant that a high proportion of the villagers said they had been given the drug in the preceding two years.

Further evidence for the link was found in the laboratory back in Canada, where E.coli exposed to the drug became resistant to ciprofloxacin and similar antibiotics, and from Guyanese public health records, which revealed an upsurge in bacterial infections resistant to these antibiotics in the months following a major malaria outbreak in 2002.

Tropical warning

Dr Michael Silverman, who led the study, said: "This means that chloroquine use for malaria may make the fluoroquinolones less effective for many common tropical diseases such as typhoid fever, diarrhoeal illnesses, and possibly also tuberculosis and pneumonia in the developing world.

"Together, these data suggest that we must focus our efforts on prevention of malaria using mosquito-control measures such as bednets and by developing vaccines.

"For the short term, however, we still will have no choice but to use these lifesaving antimalarial drugs."

Professor Laura Piddock, a researcher into antibiotic resistance at Birmingham University, said that the paper was "intriguing", but did not yet prove that the presence of the resistant strains was caused directly by the antimalarial drug.

She said: "These antimalarials have been co-administered with antibiotics for many, many years, and I would have expected that something like this would have been seen before."

[Eris]

This is not in the least bit surprising. We hear about the serious problem that is the growing antibiotic resistance in hospitals, but remember, in hospitals the drugs are used more or less responsibly. That is, they're prescribed when there's at least some need for them (even if they are on occasion over-prescribed), they're applied in the right doses for the right amounts of time and in hospitals and a lot of the time at home they're taken for the full duration, not just until you feel better. (Something which is often forgotten, but is enormously important.)

Contrast with third-world use. They're prescribed for the wrong things in the wrong doses for the wrong amounts of time. Sometimes drugs are sold as "lung tonics" to improve health generally when they're meant to kill off certain pneumonias. Combine that with a lot of improper disposal and storage, and the third world is a nightmarish pit of developing resistance.

Add that to a disinterest by pharmaceuticals in developing new antibiotics, and we're heading for a disaster on the horizon. It's going to suck to live in Africa shortly. Even more than it already does.

[[R_H]]

Add that to a disinterest by pharmaceuticals in developing new antibiotics, and we're heading for a disaster on the horizon. It's going to suck to live in Africa shortly. Even more than it already does.

Why aren't they interested in developing new antibiotics?

[Eris]

Why aren't they interested in developing new antibiotics?

Economics. Mostly, anyhow. A chronic condition like depression or high cholesterol need to be taken regularly for life in most cases, while antibiotics are a few weeks to a few months and then you're done, and a new drug can take billions to bring to market. So even with the government providing incentives to develop new antibiotics, we've seen a steady decline. During a five year period in the 1980s there were 16 new antibiotics approved for market, while there have been only five in the last five years. (As of January - not sure since then.)

[sketerpot]

Contrast with third-world use. They're prescribed for the wrong things in the wrong doses for the wrong amounts of time. Sometimes drugs are sold as "lung tonics" to improve health generally when they're meant to kill off certain pneumonias. Combine that with a lot of improper disposal and storage, and the third world is a nightmarish pit of developing resistance.

They're using ANTIBIOTICS as everyday health supplements? What the hell is wrong with them?

Maybe we could try introducing homeopathic replacements. Those would have the advantage of just being placebos.

[FireNexus]

A lack of education. These are the same group of people that will tack condoms up to the doorframe as a talisman against aids, while they fuck a virgin to attempt to cure themselves.