No new classes of antibiotics have been invented for decades

[Wyatt earp]

Was talking to a Doctor this morning at my bible study and I had to look this up what he told me, to see if its true..




Why is it so difficult to discover new antibiotics?



Over-reliance on and misuse of antibiotics has led to warnings of a future without effective medicines. Why is it so difficult for scientists to discover new drugs?

It's a tale of scientific discovery taught the world over: the serendipitous find of a mould that revolutionised modern medicine.

Almost 90 years ago, Alexander Fleming returned from holiday to find Penicillium on Petri dishes left in his basement laboratory at St Mary's Hospital in London.

By the 1950s, the golden age of antibiotic discovery, an array of new medicines was being found.

Today, scientists are searching for a new breakthrough, testing microbes in sources as diverse as soil, caves and Komodo dragon blood, as well as developing new, lab-made synthetic drugs.

Yet despite these remarkable advances, we are running out of effective antibiotics - the drugs that fight infection and are essential for everything from organ transplants to the treatment of food poisoning.

Deadly bacteria resistant to penicillin, or the more than 100 different antibiotics since developed, are already killing 700,000 people every year.

Unchecked, the global toll could rise to 10 million a year by 2050.

If the problem is so serious, why, in this age of incredible medical and scientific endeavour and advance, is it so difficult to get the new antibiotics the world so desperately needs?

Racing the superbugs
The answer lies partly in scientific challenge and partly in the broken economy of research and development work.

Perhaps the less well known part of Fleming's story is the long period of research and collaboration which followed, before, in the 1940s, Penicillium became the world's first antibiotic.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Drug-resistant superbug quietly spreading through world's hospitals: study



Drug-resistant superbug quietly spreading through world's hospitals: study




A superbug resistant to all known antibiotics that can cause severe infections or even death is spreading undetected through hospital wards across the world, scientists in Australia warned on Monday.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne discovered three variants of the multidrug-resistant bug in samples from 10 countries, including strains in Europe that cannot be reliably tamed by any drug currently on the market.

"We started with samples in Australia but did a global snapshot and found that it's in many countries and many institutions around the world," Ben Howden, director of the university's Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory told AFP.

"It seems to have spread."

The bacteria, known as Staphylococcus epidermidis, is related to the better-known and more deadly MRSA.

It's found naturally on human skin and most commonly infects the elderly or patients who have had prosthetic materials implanted, such as catheters and joint replacements.

"It can be deadly, but it's usually in patients who already are very sick in hospital... it can be quite hard to eradicate and the infections can be severe," Howden said.

His team looked at hundreds of S. epidermidis specimens from 78 hospitals worldwide.

They found that some strains of the bug made a small change in its DNA that led to resistance to two of the most common antibiotics, often administered in tandem to treat hospital infections.

"These two antibiotics are unrelated and you would not expect one mutation to cause both antibiotics to fail," said Jean Lee, a PhD student at Melbourne's Doherty Institute, and co-author of the study.

Many of the most powerful antibiotics are extremely expensive and even toxic, and the team behind the study said that the practice of using multiple drugs at once to prevent resistance may not be working.

'Biggest danger'

The researchers said they believe the superbug is spreading rapidly due to the particularly high use of antibiotics in intensive care units, where patients are sickest and strong drugs are prescribed as routine.

 

[Harry Dresden]

First new antibiotic in 30 years discovered in major breakthrough