"What bacteria don't know can hurt them" - new research

A very interesting article on how bacteria evades antibiotics and on biofilms.


A very interesting article on how bacteria evades antibiotics and on biofilms.

What bacteria don't know can hurt them By Leila Gray
UW Health Sciences/UW Medicine
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/what-bacteria-dont-know-can-hurt-them

"Instead of well-described resistance mechanisms, like pumps that expel antibiotics from bacterial cells, the researchers found that the bacteria’s protective mechanism defended them against toxic forms of oxygen, called radicals. This mechanism jives with new findings showing that antibiotics kill by generating these toxic radicals."

Post Edited By Moderator (Traveler) : 11/20/2011 10:58:33 AM (GMT-7)

The immune system also uses oxygen free-radicals to kill pathogens. White blood cell contents and other immune cells generate hydrogen peroxide, for example, which is capable of breaking down the cell wall of many pathogens.

Germs use other methods of evading threats also, including biofilms (proven to exist in the mouth - that's what the stuff is they scrape off the teeth during a cleaning;

theorized to exist in blood vessels as plaque that causes narrowing of blood vessels and heart attacks & strokes;

theorized to exist in the bowels as one means probiotic organisms use to protect themselves from the digestive juices and enzymes)

and also it is known that germs can communicate with each other, even between different types of germs, using quorum sensing.

Via quorum sensing communication, the germs can share survival techniques and possibly even genetic material.

I think more than anything else this is why treatment has to be customized to the individual -

everyone's germ mixture (mileau) is different, resulting in different sharing of information between the germs for different survival techniques...

thus the way to counter those survival techniques has to be customized to the individual.

Note: I broke up the text for easier reading for those who struggle to read large blocks of text.

Traveler said...
Apple-a-day,
You are not allowed to say things that inflame others, or put down the style of treatment that they choose to use. Please read the rules that Admin has kindly provided us with. If you insist on continuing to post only negative posts, attacking other members, it will be taken up with Administration.

I beg your pardon?  I guess something got lost in translation here... English is not my first language, I guess my attempt at joking was not very succesful.  Sorry about that

Appleaday,
If you would like to email me, I could explain it better. I would email you first, but you don't have one available.

If you don't want to email me, that's fine too - I'm sorry that there may have only been a miscommunication. I do have a tendency to assume that we all speak English, sorry.