Tumgik
#antibiotics
mindblowingscience · 2 months
Text
Researchers have identified an entirely new class of antibiotic that can kill bacteria that are resistant to most current drugs. Zosurabalpin is highly effective against the bacterium carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Crab), which is classified as a "priority 1" pathogen by the World Health Organization due to its growing presence in hospitals.
Continue Reading.
218 notes · View notes
macgyvermedical · 3 months
Text
Magic Bullets: The Antibiotic Story
Tumblr media
The year was 1907 and a Dr. Alfred Bertheim was trying to make arsenic less toxic to humans.
Why? Because in addition to killing humans, arsenic also kills trypanosomes- single-celled protozoa that cause the life-threatening infection trypanosomiasis. By creating a version of arsenic that still killed the protozoa, but not the human they infected, Dr. Bertheim could create a drug to treat the disease*.
This was not a fully new idea. About 50 years earlier, a drug called Atoxyl had been created in France. About 40 times less toxic than pure arsenic, it had been shown to not only successfully treat trypanosomiasis, but also the equally devastating syphilis infection.
But 40 times less toxic than pure arsenic is still not great. About 2% of people treated even one time with the drug ended up blind, among a myriad of other side effects. It was a start, but not ideal.
And Dr. Bertheim (under the direction of better-known Dr. Paul Ehrlich) was setting out to change that.
And it just so happened that the sixth compound from the sixth group he tried did so. Known as "compound 606", the new Arsphenamine could treat trypanosomiasis, relapsing fever, and syphilis very effectively- and it didn't leave its takers dead or blind.
Most of the time, at least. See, arsphenamine, also known by the brand name salvarsan, was a pain in the ass to administer. It had to be dissolved in several hundred mililiters of water under a nitrogen atmosphere to prepare it for administration. If it touched air, it would rapidly react, causing toxic byproducts that could cause liver failure, severe skin rashes, and even death.
But both trypanosomiasis and syphilis were definitely going to kill you, so it was worth the risk.
And the seed had been planted, so to say. The idea of a chemical able to kill infection-causing agents without killing the host was a true possibility for the future of medicine.
And by 1912, Neosalvarsan, a drug somewhat less effective -but far easier to administer and with significantly fewer side effects- was on the market. Over the next decade, Neosalvarsan would be responsible for a massive drop in syphilis cases worldwide.
But neither of the drugs could treat deadly infections from staph or strep or the hundreds of other bacterial or viral infections that still had no cure in the 1910's and 1920's.
Then came the first of the heavy-hitters. Bayer was a dye company when it started, and in 1932, three and a half decades after switching mostly to pharmaceuticals, chemists at Bayer were testing the company's dyes for anti-infective properties. They went through thousands of trials, finally finding a dye that could kill streptococcal bacteria without killing a mouse host.
Pre-1930s, streptococcal disease was a major problem. It caused strep throat, cellulitis, scarlet fever, childbed (purpural) fever, some forms of toxic shock syndrome, impetigo, necrotizing fasciitis, rheumatic fever, and many others. The skin infections may have been at least somewhat treatable with a hot compress, but the rest were prone to cause blindness, deafness, loss of limbs, and for many, loss of life.
In 1936, sulfonamide antibiotics changed that. Protosil, the first of the sulfonamides, became available to treat many of the infections listed above. These would be used for wound infections throughout WWII. Unfortunately, they would also cause the untimely death of nearly 100 people via the Elixer Sulfanilamide tragedy.
Sulfanilamide was a similar drug to Prontosil and was safe and effective for treating strep infections. However, when mixed with diethylene glycol (now used as standard car antifreeze) to make it into a liquid suspension, it was deadly. See this letter from a doctor who had prescribed the liquid form of the medication, not knowing it was poison:
Tumblr media
[to read more about the Elixer Sulfanilamide Disaster, see here]
Despite the sulfanilamide tragedy, the race was on for more antibiotics. Three years before they went on the market, researchers had found evidence of bacterial resistance to sulfonamides. What would happen when these new bacteria, that didn't die when exposed to the new wonder drug, made up so much of the bacterial population?
In 1942, the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston caused over 492 deaths and 130 injuries. The injured were among the first to receive a remarkable new drug called penicillin. The fire and the fate of the victims were publicized throughout the world, and penicillin became a household name overnight. But once again, even before it went on the market in 1943, just in time for the end of the Second World War, there was evidence of resistance.
But fortunately, the fire had been sparked. Over the next 30 years, many dozens of antibiotics would come into clinical use. If you've taken it, it probably came out between 1940 and 1970. Tetracycline, isoniazid, metronidazole, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, vancomycin, amoxicillin, and dozens more you've never heard of.
And then? Nothing.
Well, not completely nothing, there were a couple that came out in the 1980s and a few in the early 2000s. But nothing like that 30-year golden age.
But now we're running into problems due to drug resistance. About 1.27 million people die annually directly from antibiotic resistant infection, while antibiotic resistance contributes to about 4.95 million more deaths.
The good news is that the drugs that are being made today are directly targeting those antibiotic resistant infections. In fact, as I'm writing this, a new drug (Zosurabalpin) is being tested for a bacteria called Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, which up until now has had no antibiotic that works against it.
*as you may imagine for the time period, this was not necessarily a benevolent act. See, most of the reason Europeans wanted to treat trypanosomiasis in the first place was because they kept dying of it when they went to colonize Africa. And they wanted something that would give them a leg up on the people who were already there.
92 notes · View notes
nerdgirlnarrates · 1 month
Text
Medblr, I think we ought to have an antibiotics bracket. Just for fun. Everyone can submit their favorite antibiotic regimens and write propaganda for them (or anti-propaganda for the ones you hate) before we crown the one true antibiotic (regimen). Doesn’t have to be a single medication, it can be a combo. Here’s some of what I’m thinking of including:
vanc/zosyn
Azithromycin
Amp/gent
Rifampin/isoniazid/pyrazinamide/ethambutol
Augmentin
Cephalexin
Vanc/ceftriaxone
Amphotericin
Nitrofurantoin
Vote however you want—what you prescribe most, best side effect profile, most interesting mechanism, vibes, whatever. Let me know what other antibiotics you think I should include!
59 notes · View notes
courtingwonder · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
How To Make Penicillin --- From "The Book", pg. 34-35
83 notes · View notes
miss-biophys · 4 months
Text
Did we kill them?
Tumblr media
Looking at what concentrations my antibiotics killed resistant Staphylococcus bacteria.
Higher antibiotic concentrations are on the right side, where there is clear liquid with no bacteria growth. It works!
50 notes · View notes
holersirup · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
medicinal chemistry ☕🖤
56 notes · View notes
lindahall · 18 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Alexander Fleming – Scientist of the Day
Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist, died Mar. 11, 1955, at age 73.  
read more...
29 notes · View notes
scotianostra · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media
On 28th September 1928 Alexander Fleming, a Scottish researcher discovered penicillin.
I know we all like to blow our own trumpets and us, as Scots gave the world a lot, certainly punching above our weights, per head of population, but let’s be honest, Fleming never had much of a clue what to do with his discovery at first.
Often described as a careless lab technician, oor Alex returned from a two-week holiday to find that a mould had developed on an accidentally contaminated staphylococcus culture plate. Upon examination of the mould, he noticed that the culture prevented the growth of staphylococci. Staphylococcus is a bacteria that can be found normally in the nose and on the skin.
That’s not to  say he wasn’t clever, he knew this was something special and in an article he had published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1929 he wrote;
 “The staphylococcus colonies became transparent and were obviously undergoing lysis … the broth in which the mould had been grown at room temperature for one to two weeks had acquired marked inhibitory, bactericidal and bacteriolytic properties to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.”
At the time Fleming was actually working on the flu virus, penicillin was a bi-product of what most of us men are guilty of, - not doing the washing up! 
Fleming’s laboratory notebooks are sketchy, and his subsequent accounts of the discovery are contradictory. The evidence of the first culture, which he photographed, indicated that he observed lysis, the weakening and destruction of bacteria—as in his lysozyme studies. But sometimes he described the key observation as an instance of inhibition or prevention of bacterial growth in areas affected by the mould “juice,” evidenced by a clear zone surrounding the mould.
Although these two effects occur under quite different conditions, Fleming probably forgot which observation came first, for in the months subsequent to the original observation he conducted many experiments while varying conditions systematically.
He discovered that the antibacterial substance was not produced by all moulds, only by certain strains of Penicillium, namely, Penicillium notatum. Although he could not isolate it, he named the active substance “penicillin.” He studied methods of producing the impure product and determined its stability at different temperatures and over various lengths of time. He investigated its effect on many microbes, curiously omitting the familiar spirochete that causes syphilis (which Salvarsan controlled but did not eliminate). He tested its toxicity on a laboratory mouse and a rabbit. Forever after, it has been a puzzle why he did not inject these or other laboratory animals with staphylococcus or other disease-causing bacteria before injecting them with the fluid containing penicillin. Perhaps the explanation lay in his belief that cures come from within the body itself, rather than from an external agent. So he was not looking for a curative agent but rather focused on his new find as a topical antiseptic. In later years he claimed that the difficulties he had experienced in isolating and stabilizing penicillin, let alone the problems of producing sufficient quantities for clinical trials, had prevented him from realising the full fruits of his research.
So the main point of me saying this is it looks like he ran out of ideas because come 1931 he had stopped working with penicillin. In fact apart from his own work, little notice was taken by the scientific community of  the paper he published.
However his research was continued and finished by Howard Flory and Ernst Chain, researchers at University of Oxford who are credited with the development of penicillin for use as a medicine in mice.  It wasn’t  until 1939 that  Florey and Chain, led a team of British scientists who successfully manufactured the drug from the liquid broth in which penicillin grows. 
They, along with Fleming, were given the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their roles in the discovery and development of this agent, and the pair deserve as much credit for carrying on with the development of penicillin, so yes well done Alexander Fleming, but let’s not forget the others. 
265 notes · View notes
thefisherqueen · 4 months
Text
On the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers.
Erysipelas (more common know as St. Anthony's fire in English, apperently. In Dutch we call in wound rose) is a bacterial skin infection, leading to swelling, redness and fever. Left untreated - and in the time this story was published, 1924, the invention of broad-spectrum antibiotics like pencilin was still several years away - it can lead to some serious complications like blood clots, blood poisoning or meningitis
22 notes · View notes
alpaca-clouds · 11 months
Text
Medicine in Castlevania
Tumblr media
Had a talk about this topic with @autumnmobile12 and promised I was gonna write a bit about it.
There is the big question, what kind of medicine the vampires have available in the Netflix version of Castlevania. After all Lisa goes to Dracula to learn about medicine and does so. And we know that the knowledge available is far ahead of the time that the series is set (mainly 1475 and 1476).
We see a lot of chemical equipment in Dracula's laboratory, but of course we cannot say, what it does.
The one thing we know is that they know about antibiotics. This is based on Lisa giving the old woman in the village a medication for her cough made from mold. Which is fairly certainly penicillin.
Given how penicillin in the real world was discovered, we can assume two more things from this. In the real world it was discovered, by some spores from a certain kind of mold (one, that primarily grows on melons and sometime on citrus fruits) getting on a petri dish, where they were cultivating bacteria cultures, and then killing the bacteria. Hence, them knowing about penicillin does imply that they know about how to grow bacteria cultures - and hence know about bacteria. After all you would not give someone antibiotics without knowing about bacteria!
Another thing we know is, that Lisa in her own laboratory in Lupu has a centrifuge. Usually centrifuges are used either in some chemical processes, but more likely is, that it is used in blood tests. Which would make it clear that they have some knowledge of the components of blood. This also does imply that they can draw blood in a somewhat orderly manner.
So, in the real world penicillin was discovered in 1928, while blood tests go back to the 18th century.
Some other stuff that was discovered medically in the early 20th century would be insulin (which originally was made from the organs of animals, which I absolutely could see to be something that the vampires in Castlevania have figured out) and vitamins and their importance for the human body.
In the about 100 years before that, other important stuff was discovered. Aspirin being one such thing, as it was originally made from the bark of willow and I very much assume that they have already access to. X-Rays, too, being such a thing. Though I am not entirely certain about these, because while they do have electricity, I am not entirely certain how much they understand about electricity. Something I am rather certain about is general anesthesia, which was discovered in 1849 in the real world.
Vaccines were discovered technically in 1799, but it took until 1890s, until they figured out to prepare dead vaccines, that would just train your immune system, instead of giving your a minor infection. But yes, I am fairly certain that they do know about vaccines.
Some other discoveries, that would be around in the 1920s, are kinda dependend on how well the understanding of electricity is. Because the only electricity we see is in electric light. So, it is hard to say whether they have electro cardiography for example. Though obviously it would help with the survivability of surgery.
I am not entirely certain, whether they might have some other medications that need modern chemical equipment.
Another thing I am fairly certain they have, is proper microscopes, given that those go back really far back and even in the middle ages they had some good ones and they probably have access to much better ones in this world.
But just to imagine, how much the knowledge of bacteria, fungi and maybe viruses would help survivability. Just knowing to desinfect hands before a surgery (something we see Lisa do) and such would do a lot. Heck, antibiotics would greatly help the survivability of the black death and of course vaccines would do so much more. So, if they really end up sharing that knowledge in the end of the series, the next few centuries would have a very different outcome.
(I might also ramble a bit about technology in that world, if anyone is interested.)
Tagging @udaberriwrites and @lena-hills, too, because they might be interested.
62 notes · View notes
agingdisgracefully · 13 days
Text
Don't mind me - just documenting my experience with Cephalexin as someone with a documented Penicillin allergy
9 notes · View notes
mindblowingscience · 3 months
Text
The African Matabele ants are often injured in fights with termites. Their conspecifics recognize when the wounds become infected and initiate antibiotic treatment. The Matabele ants (Megaponera analis), which are widespread south of the Sahara, have a narrow diet: They only eat termites. Their hunting expeditions are dangerous because termite soldiers defend their conspecifics—and use their powerful mandibles to do so. It is therefore common for the ants to be injured while hunting.
Continue Reading.
229 notes · View notes
acti-veg · 1 year
Text
Suppliers of beef to McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Walmart are sourcing meat from US farms that use antibiotics linked to the spread of dangerous superbugs, an investigation has found.
Unpublished US government records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Guardian show farms producing beef for meat packing firms Cargill, JBS, and Green Bay are risking public health by still using antibiotics classed as the “highest priority critically important” to human health (HP-CIAs).
127 notes · View notes
nerdgirlnarrates · 17 days
Text
Flucloxacillin: another pencillin, this time the most commonly prescribed narrow-spectrum penicillinase-resistant penicillin in the UK. Apparently, it was not marketed much in the US and Canada, where dicloxacillin filled its role. Flucloxacillin is used almost exclusively for gram positive infections, especially Staph aureus, though it can be also be used for pre-op prophylaxis.
Zosyn (pip/tazo): One of the big guns. Like augmentin, this combo therapy includes both a penicillin and a beta-lactamase inhibitor; unlike augmentin, it covers pseudomonas. Zosyn is crucial for treating nosocomial infections and often one of the first drugs we reach for when empirically broadening antibiotics. It is also first line for neutropenic fever.
Vote for the best antibiotic
16 notes · View notes
dailyhistoryposts · 2 years
Text
On This Day In History
September 28th, 1928: Alexander Fleming accidentally discovers penicillin.
190 notes · View notes
miss-biophys · 1 year
Text
3 years, 3 months, and 20 days went by until I could finally hit this button.
Tumblr media
My big postdoctoral research story is out of my hands. 
I popped a champagne today.
115 notes · View notes