MRSA, SARS, FLU, AVIAN FLU, TB, MENINGITIS, COMMON COLD, HIV, & Super bugs of every hue ……….
In 1918 the schoolgirls in
I had a little bird
And its name was Enza
I opened the window
And in-flew-Enza
Is there a vaccine effective against Avian or Bird Flu H5N1 in humans?
No. Currently available vaccines will not protect against disease caused by the H5N1 strain in humans. WHO is urgently working together with laboratories in the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network to develop a prototype H5N1 virus for use by leading vaccine manufacturers.
An available vaccine prototype virus, developed using the 2003 strain of H5N1 (which caused the two human cases in
In the 20th century, the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, a form of Avian Flu, which caused an estimated 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide, was followed by pandemics in 1957-1958 and 1968-1969
~Are there drugs available for prevention and treatment?
Yes. Two classes of drugs are available. These are the M2 inhibitors (amantadine and rimantadine) and the neuraminidase inhibitors (oseltamivir and zanimivir). http://www.tamiflu.com/ These drugs have been licensed for the prevention and treatment of human influenza in some countries, and are thought to be effective regardless of the causative strain.
Thirteen grams (0.46 ounces) of star anise are required to produce the equivalent of 10 Tamiflu capsules prescribed to treat one person contaminated with avian flu.
That means that the effective dose for avian flu could be 12 capsules a day at 75mg a capsule, use for 10days. Start the first day of symptoms - fever and severe chest pain. PLEASE seek the advice of a professional first. This is theory - not fact.
But, prevention is always better.
Are there any preventive measures I can take?
- Keep your hands clean by washing thoroughly with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. There is no need or efficacy in using anti-bacterial soap. In fact using these products strengthens the bacterium. The action of friction of rubbing/scrubbing the skin for 20 seconds is the most efficient protection.
- Keep cuts and scrapes clean and covered with a bandage until healed. Cough into your elbow not your hand. Use strong paper handkerchiefs to avoid droplet transmission.
- Avoid contact with other people’s wounds, handkerchiefs, dirty dishcloths, unwashed food or bandages.
- In professional settings wear the right clothing and change into street clothes when you leave. Many hospitals now use fast-acting, special antiseptic solutions, like alcohol rubs or gels - you may find dispensers placed by patient’s beds and at the entrance to clinical areas for use by staff and visitors.
- The most important type of isolation required for any potentially resistant medical infection is what is called Contact Isolation. This type of isolation requires everyone in contact with the patient to be very careful about hand washing after touching either the patient or anything in contact with the patient. If the organism is in the nose or lungs it may also be necessary to have the patient in a room to prevent spread to others by droplet spread. Because dust and surfaces can become contaminated with the organism, cleaning of surfaces are also important.
Where the common cold is concerned, the best preventive action that works is avoidance of the virus. Because cold viruses are transmitted by droplets or respiratory secretion, therefore handwashing is probably one of the most effective ways of keeping the cold at bay. When in the company of someone who has a cold4, avoid touching your eyes or nose - there might be infective droplets on your hands - and if possible, clean possibly contaminated surfaces with a virus-killing disinfectant. Avoid sharing easily contaminated things with an infected person5, and keep you personal hygiene items far away - or make sure they can be cleaned properly. (These are all just common sense measures) Maintenance of a healthy immune system is also important if you are to avoid a cold. There is currently no vaccine for the common cold because there are just too many viruses to target, and the said viruses have a tendency to evolve over a short period of time.
Studies have shown that viruses can survive on human hands for several hours and that they can be spread by direct contact. As well as through coughs and sneezes, a person may pick up the virus on their fingers by touching an infected object or person.
MRSA stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or Multiply Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (S aureus).
MRSA is created by antibiotic usage. Contrary to news reports, many of the patients with MRSA in hospital have brought the bug in with them; this has been proven by swabbing patients on admission. MRSA is endemic in nursing homes. MRSA rates are more related to overuse of antibiotics than poor hospital hygiene - the USA has a massive problem with resistant bacteria (vancomycin-resistant enterococci as well as MRSA).
S aureus is of course not the only bacterium to have gained drug resistance; it is merely the most famous. Drug resistant tuberculosis is also well known and this is indeed deadly. Some patients in
| Symptoms | Common cold | Influenza |
| Nose | Drips like a leaky faucet; nose often gets clogged up with discharge; bad attack of sneezing. Sinus membranes are usually inflamed | Not affected |
| Cough | Yes; hacking cough | Yes; dry cough (no phlegm) |
| Sore throat | Sometimes | Common |
| Fever | Usually slight; may reach 102°F in infants, young children | May reach 104°F, but subsides after two to three days |
| Headache | Localized | Prominent; nonlocalised |
| Body aches | Rare; slight | Common (head, back, arms and legs) |
| Nausea | No | Yes |
| Other symptoms | May lead to complications such as middle ear or sinus infections | Burning eyes, loss of appetite; patient may suffer chills and debilitating weakness |
| How long it lasts | Two to 14 days | May last longer than the common cold |
So what Can We Do about This?
There are a number of ways around the problem of drug resistance. Some have been already been applied and used with a mixed level of success, while some are still in the realms of theory. Just a few of the possibilities are mentioned here:
§ Limit the use of antibiotics - In the past antibiotics were overused and this is one of the causes of the rapid spread of drug resistance. They were formerly given routinely in hospitals mainly to prevent the outbreak of dangerous infections in already sick patients. Also, in farming, some antibiotics were put into animal feed to again prevent disease among animals. The drawbacks have clearly outweighed the benefits on this issue and so the overuse of antibiotics is now frowned upon. There is a growing trend to use them only when a clear bacterial infection has taken place and this should slow the spread of resistance.
§ Development of new drugs - The oldest of the methods and the most often used. If bacteria become resistant to our current array of antibiotics, simply make some more. The development of methicillin to get around ß-lacatamase-based resistance is the most famous case of this.
Unfortunately, this is more easily said than done. To develop and make a new drug is an expensive and long drawn out process as well as being of high financial risk. A pharmaceutical company typically has to put a drug through 5-10 years of trials before it is given a safety certificate to go on the market. A drug can fail at any stage of this process and more importantly, drug resistance now tends to develop more quickly than this. Bacteria can be resistant to a drug before it is available on the market.
Pharmaceutical companies are still researching into new antibiotics, however. The financial rewards of finding a new 'penicillin' with no resistance yet in place are potentially enormous.
§ Combination therapy - Another method that has already been successfully employed - although again, bacteria have found ways around it. There are a class of molecules known that prevent the action of ß-lactamase enzymes. If such a drug (clavulanic acid is a well known example of this type of drug - a ß-lactamase inhibitor) is used in combination with a penicillin then the ß-lactamase inhibitor stops the ß-lactamase enzyme from destroying the penicillin which can then get on with its job of killing the bacterium freely. Unfortunately, some bacteria can simply pump out clavulanic acid and this means that the penicillin may be destroyed. Other combination therapies may also be of use however.
§ Let some antibiotics lie 'fallow' - It has been observed that when the selective pressure to become drug resistant is removed, some bacteria will lose the DNA that leads to drug resistance. In other words they return to a more native state. It has therefore been proposed that it might be possible to use a rotating regime of antibiotics. Some antibiotics will be used for a period of time while others are not used at all. Hopefully, the bacteria would become resistant to those in use but would lose their resistance to those not in use. One could then switch the therapy and the situation would reverse, the bacteria would gain resistance to the new drug but would lose it to the old one. The cycle could then start again. This is analogous to the old three-field system in farming.
While possible in theory, this has yet to be tested in practice. Also, it is known that under certain conditions, bacteria can form spores and these spores can lie dormant for thousands to millions of years. Bacillus 2,9,3 is an example illustrating this. This allows the possibility that a bacterium that is multi-drug resistant could resurface at any time, rendering this method useless.
§ Use of Bacteriophages - Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically attack bacteria. It is proposed to use these as a way of killing drug resistant bacteria. These viruses have probably been around for as long as bacteria (billions of years) and so are excellent at their exploitation of them. Bacteriophages are specialized in invading bacterial cells only and so cannot affect our own cells. This is potentially, therefore, an exceptionally safe therapy for us.
The word bacteriophage literally means "to eat bacteria".
Once the phage has entered the body, it attaches itself to the bacteria causing the infection, and shoots in its own DNA to make the bacteria start producing bacteriophages. Within 30 minutes, up to 200 new phage are created, according to Dr Dixon, and in the process the bacteria die.
The job done, the phage automatically start to disappear.
And if the bacteria become resistant to the phage, as they have done to antibiotics, a new phage matched to the new bacteria can be developed. In order to inhibit resistance, a cocktail of phages would most likely be used in treatment.
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