I got dysentery in a human challenge trial(eukaryotewritesblog.com)
eukaryotewritesblog.com
I got dysentery in a human challenge trial
https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/10/21/i-got-dysentery-so-you-dont-have-to/
56 comments
Getting paid $4,000 to participate in a trial that could potentially save thousands of lives for a disease is incredible. But even better that it's a somewhat neglected disease that doesn't often occur in the western world. Sounds like the experiment was a success and I am hopefully/excited to see this rolled out!
I had a friend who participated in such a trial and ended up with long term liver injury.
It's not money for nothing and it's a bigger choice than people credit.
It's not money for nothing and it's a bigger choice than people credit.
Phags are really promising in case of antibiotics-resistant bacterias. However I wonder how long does it take to find out the bacteria is resitant, breed new phages and apply them.
It's because from my experience doctors usually give me antibiotics even BEFORE they find out what bacteria I have. "Oh you have pneumonia, better give you clavulanic acid". Next time they provide me with something else. When I asked "should we make a bacterial culture" - they say "it will take so much time, better take the antibiotics now".
For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly.
It's because from my experience doctors usually give me antibiotics even BEFORE they find out what bacteria I have. "Oh you have pneumonia, better give you clavulanic acid". Next time they provide me with something else. When I asked "should we make a bacterial culture" - they say "it will take so much time, better take the antibiotics now".
For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly.
If you’re already sick, you probably have a raging bacterial infection going on. Waiting three days for a culture is unlikely to improve the choice of therapy for someone not sick enough to be in the hospital.
My eustachian tubes plugged up while I was flying home from my honeymoon. Three days later, my ears were still stopped up. I was in medical school at the time, so I went to the student health clinic (run by senior residents). I said that I had ear infections commonly as a child, that this ear had been plugged for three days, and could I have antibiotics? He said, let’s look first. He did. He then said, “no pain, just dulled hearing? No fevers?” Correct. “That’s the worst-looking eardrum I have ever seen in an adult. Here’s some amoxicillin-clavulanate.”
Antibiotics are broadly classified as bacteriostatic (prevents multiplication) or bacteriocidal (kills living bacteria). Amoxicillin (like all beta-lactam antibiotics) is bacteriocidal. Thirty minutes after I took my first dose, I vividly experienced this. Chills, fever, shivering, sweating that lasted for almost two hours as millions or billions of bacteria died and their dead cells entered my bloodstream. The second dose was not as bad but still unpleasant. By the third dose, I just felt a few minutes of unpleasantness. And after three days, my ear finally unplugged.
My eustachian tubes plugged up while I was flying home from my honeymoon. Three days later, my ears were still stopped up. I was in medical school at the time, so I went to the student health clinic (run by senior residents). I said that I had ear infections commonly as a child, that this ear had been plugged for three days, and could I have antibiotics? He said, let’s look first. He did. He then said, “no pain, just dulled hearing? No fevers?” Correct. “That’s the worst-looking eardrum I have ever seen in an adult. Here’s some amoxicillin-clavulanate.”
Antibiotics are broadly classified as bacteriostatic (prevents multiplication) or bacteriocidal (kills living bacteria). Amoxicillin (like all beta-lactam antibiotics) is bacteriocidal. Thirty minutes after I took my first dose, I vividly experienced this. Chills, fever, shivering, sweating that lasted for almost two hours as millions or billions of bacteria died and their dead cells entered my bloodstream. The second dose was not as bad but still unpleasant. By the third dose, I just felt a few minutes of unpleasantness. And after three days, my ear finally unplugged.
This makes it seem like it's just easy, but doesn't really say that for sure I guess:
What if the bacteria become resistant to the phages too?
Well, that can happen easily – probably even easier than with antibiotics. Cells have been duking it out with viruses since the beginning of life. (Did you know CRISPR-Cas9, now used for gene editing, evolved in nature as a way for bacteria to recognize and cut up phage DNA?)
But the difference is that whereas new antibiotics are very hard to find, there is a nigh-inexhaustible evolutionary font of phages constantly pulling ahead in the arms race. So in short: once a bacteria becomes resistant to your special phage, just find a new phage.This post starts with a jumpscare
The bacteria develop resistance fairly quickly, but you can somewhat get around that with cocktails of phages (like a bunch of phages at once).
> For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly
The hope is that you'd have a bunch of phages ready to go from a variety of patients. So you wouldn't need to make a new culture. However, right now they often do personalized phage therapy because they can only get it approved as a last-hope kinda deal. But then it makes the scientists only target chronic infections, because it does take a couple months to get another cocktail of phages ready to go.
> For a sick person after antibiotics therapy and after culture test results, those days/weeks to raise another culture of phages might be deadly
The hope is that you'd have a bunch of phages ready to go from a variety of patients. So you wouldn't need to make a new culture. However, right now they often do personalized phage therapy because they can only get it approved as a last-hope kinda deal. But then it makes the scientists only target chronic infections, because it does take a couple months to get another cocktail of phages ready to go.
“Drink the Phage” will be the name of my retro death metal album
I was left wondering if anyone has ever finished “Infinite Jest.”
Well I have not had dysentery but I have read "Infinite Jest" and had no trouble finishing it. It's an amazing book and particularly so for someone like me who was obsessed with "Hamlet" as a teen. That said it's a serious modern novel and while it contains a lot of very funny parts it's also at times difficult.
If you like David Foster Wallace his other two novels "Broom of the system" and "The Pale King" are also great. The Pale King was left unfinished when he died and was completed (from various drafts and notes) as a labour of love and respect from his notes by his editor. It's genuinely extraordinary and could possibly even have been his greatest work if he had been able to fully complete it. As is there are certain minor things in it that I'm sure he would have revised (eg I noticed some sentences are repeated etc).
If you're not sure about David Foster Wallace I can really recommend his essays and literary criticism as consistently insightful and extraordinary and also his journalism. From his essays for a starting point I would recommend "De Unibus Pluram" and also "Fictional futures and the conspicuously young", and also "Roger Federer as Religious Experience"[1]. Of his journalism I would strongly recommend "Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all" which is an amazing write up of the experience of visiting a rural state fair and "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" which is the same sort of thing about going on a cruise ship. Both are very funny and perceptive.
If you like those you know what you're getting into with this novels.
[1] Especially if you like tennis. He also wrote an amazing essay about a tennis player who is very good but not quite good enough to make the top level and is struggling to break through. THat one is amazing but the title escapes me.
If you like David Foster Wallace his other two novels "Broom of the system" and "The Pale King" are also great. The Pale King was left unfinished when he died and was completed (from various drafts and notes) as a labour of love and respect from his notes by his editor. It's genuinely extraordinary and could possibly even have been his greatest work if he had been able to fully complete it. As is there are certain minor things in it that I'm sure he would have revised (eg I noticed some sentences are repeated etc).
If you're not sure about David Foster Wallace I can really recommend his essays and literary criticism as consistently insightful and extraordinary and also his journalism. From his essays for a starting point I would recommend "De Unibus Pluram" and also "Fictional futures and the conspicuously young", and also "Roger Federer as Religious Experience"[1]. Of his journalism I would strongly recommend "Getting away from already being pretty much away from it all" which is an amazing write up of the experience of visiting a rural state fair and "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" which is the same sort of thing about going on a cruise ship. Both are very funny and perceptive.
If you like those you know what you're getting into with this novels.
[1] Especially if you like tennis. He also wrote an amazing essay about a tennis player who is very good but not quite good enough to make the top level and is struggling to break through. THat one is amazing but the title escapes me.
The tennis player in question is Michael T. Joyce. You can read the article on Esquire's site: https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david... but it's DFW so it's 15k words (approx 60 pages), which is more fun to read on paper or at least some kind of e-reader.
Consider the Lobster is amazing: https://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
The author did, ctrl-f "brick". :)
Dysentery is no joke: the defining symptom, blood in your stool, comes from your intestinal lining sloughing off. A good friend of mine got it in India and said
the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
The one upside is that dysentery is common enough in India that it was promptly recognized and treated, with a single giant horse pill targeting both bacillary & amoebic dysentery that basically cured her in 24 hours.
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carlmr(3)
"My friend Ozy said that Infinite Jest was a really good book for reading in a dysentery ward."
I made the mistake of trying to read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey when I had covid last. I never finished it, and when I try to read it now it reminds too much of how awful I felt.
I made the mistake of trying to read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey when I had covid last. I never finished it, and when I try to read it now it reminds too much of how awful I felt.
> Stated another way, more people die from dysentery now, every year than ever died from any cause on the Oregon Trail. So let’s calm down about the Oregon Trail, okay?
Okay fine. Fuck.
Okay fine. Fuck.
I can only think of The Oregon Trail when reading about Dysentery.
Yeah, I enjoyed the author's tangent about the game in the article.
thank you
Way more to learn here. The Soviets were really big on phage research also, wonder if they still have any interesting learnings: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7653335/
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/03/...