Course lengths for antibiotics isn’t well studied. From this article:
In fact, the optimal length of treatment in many common infections is not well studied and may be more than a little arbitrary. One infectious diseases doctor has suggested, somewhat satirically, that most of our current rules for antibiotic administration have more to do with the number of days in the week than they do with robust scientific evidence.
Realistically, most of the antibiotic resistance issues actually arise from antibiotic usage in farm animals. Turns out you get better and fatter growth if you microdose animals with antibiotics. Plus there’s the added benefit that you don’t need to care as much about animal hygiene or illnesses if they’re just always on antibiotics. Of course, that’s the perfect circumstance for promoting antibiotic resistance. And at the current massive scale of animal farming, antibiotic resistance spreads quickly.
But, you know, that’s an acceptable cost when you consider all the shareholder value that you create by having slightly fatter animals.
Funny thing is, antibiotic resistance is an energetically costly adaptation, and studies show that as long as you drop antibiotic usage below a certain amount, evolution would actually favor deleting antibiotic resistance genes. In other words, if we stopped using antibiotics on farm animals, a large amount of antibiotic resistance would just evaporate basically overnight. Then realize that that would never happen with our current governments
Over, under, and misuse have resulted in adaptations by bacteria. Which is to say, life evolves. Its too bad, and there is still a role for antibiotics in our world, but we have to trim our use of it.
Course lengths for antibiotics isn’t well studied. From this article:
We have a growing and, frankly, terrifying issue of antibiotic resistant bacteria from over prescribing and longer than necessary courses.
What the fuck. They told me that antibiotic resistant bacteria was caused by taking too little antibiotics. Who can I trust now???
Realistically, most of the antibiotic resistance issues actually arise from antibiotic usage in farm animals. Turns out you get better and fatter growth if you microdose animals with antibiotics. Plus there’s the added benefit that you don’t need to care as much about animal hygiene or illnesses if they’re just always on antibiotics. Of course, that’s the perfect circumstance for promoting antibiotic resistance. And at the current massive scale of animal farming, antibiotic resistance spreads quickly.
But, you know, that’s an acceptable cost when you consider all the shareholder value that you create by having slightly fatter animals.
Funny thing is, antibiotic resistance is an energetically costly adaptation, and studies show that as long as you drop antibiotic usage below a certain amount, evolution would actually favor deleting antibiotic resistance genes. In other words, if we stopped using antibiotics on farm animals, a large amount of antibiotic resistance would just evaporate basically overnight. Then realize that that would never happen with our current governments
Over, under, and misuse have resulted in adaptations by bacteria. Which is to say, life evolves. Its too bad, and there is still a role for antibiotics in our world, but we have to trim our use of it.