Super-Bugs are Super-BAD!

The issue of antibiotic -resistant superbugs has more and more entered the repositories of the mainstream media, and well it should. Right now, we may stand on a precipice of wholesale generation of these bugs if we carelessly continue down the path we've been on - stupidly using anti-biotics for every little thing (as well as for viral infections like the common cold and flu) as well as stuffing antibiotics into our food supply.

In this light, it has been calculated that nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in America are given to livestock. There is nothing wrong with these animals, the antibiotics are administered totally out of capitalist obsession with profits and naked greed. Thus, they are administered to force healthy animals to grow faster, and more pounds means more money at the supermarket. The trouble is this activity provides enormous opportunities for the spread of superbugs. (See, 'The Spread of Superbugs' in The Economist, April 2, p. 73).

Two of the most ravaging superbugs are MRSA, an especially nasty form of staphylococcus that is resistant to many antibiotics, and clostridium difficile, or "c. diff." which actually arises when too powerful forms of anti-biotic kill the normal bacterial flora in the gut leaving only this nasty form to proliferate. Both of these are generally picked up while spending time in hospitals (one reason people shouldn't get too comfy in a hospital, and need to do their level best to leave asap). But this isn't always the case.

My run up with a superbug occurred indirectly, back in December of 2006. At the time my wife had been suffering from a severe sinus infection which had already gone on for two weeks. I was also suffering from severe nasal and chest congestion. She suggested we both see the family doctor and get an antibiotic to knock the infections out, but I told her I'd prefer to fight it on my own. In another week, after lots of coughing up loads of nasty stuff and inhaling from nebulizers nearly every night, I was through with it. Meanwhile, she opted to go for an amoxicillin prescription, given her by the Nurse assistant.

Within three days of beginning her course of amoxicillin, she was going to the toilet nonstop. We aren't talking about normal movements and with normal consistency, we are talking about cholera-like episodes accompanied by agonizing abdominal spasms, with the stools bearing the consistency of watery gruel. And we won't even get into the odor! By the fourth day she was so dehydrated, after running 22-25 times to the toilet each day, she went back to see the family dr. He immediately took a sample and the lab report came back: c. diff. He prescribed the antibiotic flagyl to off it (I know this sounds counter-intuitive but once c. diff. gains traction in the gut the only way to knock it out is via more powerful antibiotics!) Alas, after nearly a week, it didn't work, she was worse than ever and I had to rush her into the ER again, where they immediately put her on a drip.

Now hospitalized, but forced to share a room with another, I questioned the nurse about this, pointing out she was probably highly infectious. (Indeed, hospital studies on the distribution of c.diff. show it's only controlled by continual cleaning of all surfaces with bleach, every day and all the advisories insist patients have their own rooms to prevent the spread of c. diff. spores.) But the most the nurse would do is prevent her from using the general patients' lavatory, and restrict herself to a tiny "porto-potty" instead. It was humiliating for her and totally wrong.

After much more intense lobbying and complaining she finally got her own room where she was able to recover in comfort. She was also placed on the only remaining antibiotic with the strength to knock out c.diff. - vancomycin- which is why the doctors always save it for last, the final arrow in their quiver of protection. As one doctor told me, "Once the vancomycin goes, a lot of people will die." Fortunately for my wife, she was out of the hospital in another four days.

But our work at home had only begun, including disinfecting all her bedding and clothing, and washing them in high concentration bleach detergent. Then, going all over the house and wiping all the surfaces down with nearly 80% bleach solution, including telephone, and tables, chairs, tv, and everything else with which she'd come into contact. This was done every other day for a week, under doctor's orders.

What frightened me about the incident is how close she came to dying. Most patients with c.diff. die because the intensity of the explosive bowel movements causes the large intestine to rupture (from severe colitis and toxic megacolon). This is partly owing to the fact the bacteria 'spike' into the gut lining to force it to release vast amounts of water accompanied by spasms, as they destroy the mucosal lining. But a smaller segment die from dehydration, as with cholera. She came close to the last and that was why I fought like a Tasmanian devil to see that not only did she get to the ER but was expedited through it after the initial antibiotic failed.

This is but one story, but I'd strongly suggest people - readers recall it the next time they're tempted to have an antibiotic prescribed. It might be better, in the end, to just tough it out! For more on the benefits of the latter, please consult the work of University of Antwerp microbiologist, Hermann Gossens and his trials of 2007. He found that those subjects exposed to throat streptococci and given only a placebo were the only ones showing no signs of drug-resistant strains of streptococcus. The others, taking azithromycin and clarithromycin, did. Go figure!