How will we survive bacterial infections in the post-antibiotic era?
Introduction
For the past 100 years, antibiotics have saved millions of lives from bacterial infections, such as tuberculosis, cholera and Staphylococcal pneumonia. However, all the major bacterial pathogens have developed resistance to antibiotics, and the world is stepping into the post-antibiotic era. No antibiotic is available to treat bacterial infections, and people are in great danger of being killed by drug-resistant bacteria. Development of new antibiotics to treat bacterial infection is not a long-term solution, because it is the antibiotics that pressurize bacteria to develop resistance against them. This is an arm race that humans can’t win over bacterial evolution. Thus, the fundamental legitimacy of the pathogen-targeted allopathic medicine is questioned. For the past thousands of years, however, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been able to treat infectious diseases without forcing pathogens to develop drug-resistance. How does TCM treat infectious diseases and why is TCM exempt from drug-resistance issues? This article will tell you the answers.
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1. The discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin
In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic that was produced by fungi to inhibit bacterial growth. Over the past several decades since its discovery, penicillin and other antibiotics have saved millions of lives through treating bacterial infections, making enormous contributions to human health.
2. The widely-spread bacterial resistance to antibiotics has led humans into the "post-antibiotic era"
After about 100 years, almost all major pathogenic bacteria have developed resistance to one or more antibiotics. Thus, the therapeutic effectiveness of antibiotics is significantly reduced. Doctors are facing the problem that no effective antibiotic is available to treat bacterial infection.
In 2012 the Director-General of WHO, Ms Margaret Chan, warned that we are fast approaching a “post-antibiotic era” and “an end to modern medicine”, when “Things as common as a strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill”.
3. How does antibiotic resistance become a widely spread issue?
When an antibiotic is used to treat bacterial infections, it hardly eliminates all pathogenic bacteria in the patient. There are always a small number of bacteria that acquire resistance to the antibiotic through mutations. In most cases, the antibiotic kills most of the pathogenic bacteria and allows the patient to recover from the infection. However, the resistant bacterial strains may stay or spread to other people. Moreover, the use of high-dose antibiotics for a long time could destroy the microbiota in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and the resistant bacteria can proliferate and become a dominant species in the GI tract, which makes the patient more susceptible to new infections and even other diseases.
The misuse of antibiotics in animal farms and aquacultures is another way to spread antibiotic resistance. Many antibiotics are used in animal farms and aquacultures. The food, soil and water are contaminated by antibiotics. In the end, the residual antibiotics accumulate in humans as we are at the top of the food chain.
The on-going cycle of antibiotic resistance spread between humans, animals and the environment. Source: http://www.me-med.com and (CDC 2013).
4. What are the solutions for antibiotic resistance?
People may simply believe that humans just need to produce more new antibiotics to replace the old ones. The answer is it will not work. It usually takes more than 1 billion dollars and ten years to develop a new antibiotic, but it only takes 2-3 years for bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotic. Humans can’t win the arm race with bacteria because it is against the evolution laws. As a result, many pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the non-profitable development of new antibiotics.
Many scientists are working to reveal the mechanism of antibiotic resistance at the molecular and cellular levels, hoping to solve the bacterial-resistance issue. However, this can only be a stopgap measure. From the evolutionary point of view, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is inevitable, because it is the result of using antibiotics to select the resistant strains. Scientists may temporarily block the pathways by which bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, but sooner or later bacteria will develop resistance from other pathways, as long as there is a selection pressure..
In fact, drug resistance is not only limited to bacterial antibiotic resistance. Other pathogens like viruses, fungi and cancer cells can also develop resistances to the chemical drugs that are designed to directly kill or inhibit them. Drug resistance is a common concern for all pathogens.
5. Humans and microorganisms are in harmonic coexistence.
Microorganisms appeared on the earth long before humans. Human evolution is a result of co-evolution with microorganisms as well as many other species. For example, the number of microorganisms in the human body is more than 10 times the number of human cells. The human genome contains a large number of viral and bacterial genetic sequences. So, without these microbes, humans can’t survive. Since microorganisms are so important to us, even an integral part of our bodies, we shouldn't, and certainly can't, eliminate them. We must learn to live in harmony with microorganisms and maintain balance, not confrontation. And so on, we want to live in harmony with any other creatures in nature, rather than confront and conquer them.
6. In the post-antibiotic era, TCM will play a major role in control of infectious diseases
If antibiotic resistance leads to the end of allopathic medicine, that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, confrontation is the source of the problem, not the solution.
Compared to modern medicine, TCM treats infectious diseases in a different way. TCM doesn’t directly kill or inhibit pathogens. Instead, it restores and promotes the self-healing power and the immunity of humans. The self-healing power and immunity of humans are the most powerful forces that defend humans against pathogen invasion. When the self-healing power and immunity are weak or compromised, pathogens take advantage of it and invade humans to cause diseases.
Therefore, the purpose of medicine is helping the human body to restore and promote the self-healing power and immunity to fight the pathogens. One can imagine that TCM is standing on the giant’s shoulders (the self-healing power and immunity of the human body) to fight the pathogens, which is a synergistic action and much more effective than directly killing or inhibiting the pathogens by chemical drugs alone, not mention that chemical drugs sometimes have side effects on the human body to damage the self-healing power and immunity.
Moreover, since TCM herbs don't directly kill or inhibit pathogens, they won’t force pathogens to develop resistance against the herbs. That is why although TCM herbs have been used for thousands of years in treating infectious diseases, we have never seen any drug-resistance from pathogens.
In Chinese history, there has been overwhelming evidence that TCM effectively controls infectious diseases in epidemics and pandemics. The most recent ones are SARS and COVID-19, which have been documented in many news reports and clinical studies. As to how TCM exactly promotes the self-healing power and regulates immunity, please stay with us to learn more about TCM in future.
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