Anthony writes:
This image was posted on Facebook by Kim Dallesandro, the wife of the Warhol star Joe Dallesandro. I don’t know where it’s originally from.
Larissa writes:
Hi Drs. Racaniello et. al,
I have a specific case study of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis which I think may be of interest to you or listeners:
I recently acquired a toddler. At the time the toddler arrived to my house, she was 18 months old, eating only formula from a bottle, was not toilet trained, and did not have a habit of putting things into her mouth. Her previous living conditions are unknown, but it is safe to say they were generally unclean. Her primary caregiver was a vegetarian and an IV drug user.
The toddler had frank diarrhea 6+ times a day upon arrival. Also upon arrival she was switched from formula to “real food” and water. I took her to multiple doctors regarding the diarrhea who across the board suggested that she had a gluten intolerance or a lactose intolerance.
As an owner of multiple dogs who drink out of woodland puddles, I know infected poop when I see it.
After a string of doctors and taking a watch/wait approach, I finally walked into an ER and demanded that a doctor test her for parasites (after lying to the doctor that I had, in fact, removed her from gluten for a period of 4 weeks), and low and behold – the toddler had Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, was treated by antibiotics for about 3 weeks, and is now ~6 months out and 100% symptom free.
A happy ending to a sad story.
Best regards,
Lara
Heather writes:
Dear TWiM,
I want to apologize for not writing much lately due to excessive “grad studenting” (yes, this is now a verb). However, I would like to request that you please discuss the hyperthermophile microbes of Peru’s Boiling River. I assume you have seen it all over the news last week. I listened to the audiobook and was very impressed. I am anticipating another potential Taq polymerase, or something even more mind-blowing, to come out of this and would love to hear what the learned TWiM hosts have to say about it and the interesting (and potentially academically risky) stance of Andres Ruzo. Back to excessive “grad studenting” now.
Regards,
Heather
Wink writes:
Michael,
I think ticks are such good transmitters because they stay on you, feeding, for hours to days.
Wink Weinberg
Supti writes:
hello i am Gargee from India and i am a regular listener of your podcasts. I have a question, can development of antibiotic resistance be related to quorum sensing? Have any studies been made on this topic?
thank you
Anthony writes:
Washington Post – Plague alive and well in Madagascar
“…
Plague victims’ corpses are to be buried immediately to prevent the spread of the disease. This means that they may be interred near a city hospital, instead of in the family crypt. But families will go so far as to stealthily unearth their loved ones to bring them back to their own villages for burial. Plus, there is a chance that families may anticipate not being able to bury their family members properly and decide to not bring their relatives to the hospital at all, said Ken Gage, chief of Flea-Borne Diseases Activity at the CDC. Among officials’ tactics is burying the corpses with concrete tombs to try to discourage the unearthings, Werner said.
Madagascar has seen lower numbers of deaths from the plague in the past two years, but an alarmingly higher rate of contracting the pneumonic form of the disease — the kind that is airborne and can kill you in 24 hours.
Mike writes:
Hello professors TWiM,
Thanks for the great podcast. I have often wondered why we so frequently prescribe single antibiotics to patients. At this point we know that bacteria are rapidly evolving resistance. It strikes me that this is exactly the same problem as we have with HIV infections, with the primary difference being a question of the speed of evolution. Human immunodeficiency virus evolves very fast, to the point that resistance evolves within just a few years (or less) in a single host. With bacteria, the exact same process is happening, but bacteria are much larger and slower evolving, so the process takes decades and many hosts. However, the solution is still basically the same: if it takes a decade plus a few million infected hosts to evolve resistance to a single drug, surely it would take centuries to evolve resistance to a combination therapy?
So then the question is: why does this never happen? I recognise that the resistance issue is not only an issue of medical prescriptions, the massive use of single-drug antibiotics in stock animals is probably an even bigger concern, but still: doesn’t it seem that using a triple therapy of antibiotics would be more effective for the patient, as well as being better at preserving our antibiotic supply?
I recognize the immediate response would be: we don’t give more drugs than we have to. My answer to that is easy: we have to, we are running out of antibiotics. The next obvious response is that antibiotics have side effects and that this means you should minimise their use. Is that the main reason that we don’t do this? Is there a reason we can’t give a single pill with multiple antibiotics in it and just give anti-nausea and anti-diarrhea medicines to the patient to take as needed? The side effects of a single antibiotic are primarily due to the death of so many bacteria in the gut, would adding two more antibiotics to the mix actually make those symptoms that much worse? I have no idea, but I would really like to know.
Thanks so much again for your fantastic podcast.
All the best,
Mike
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Michael D. Dacre
Research Professional, Fraser Lab
Stanford, California
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