How Baking Soda Could Help Fight Deadly Superbugs

Content: 

Every year, tens of thousands of Americans die from infections antibiotics can’t effectively treat. In the next few decades, that number may rise significantly.

Meanwhile, physicians are still choosing which drugs to use, based on a test that hasn’t really changed since John F. Kennedy was president. Moreover, the half century-old test has a serious flaw that’s long been overlooked by doctors: Bacteria act differently inside humans than they do in the lab, which means lab tests can deliver misleading results.

In the past, this wasn’t a big deal because doctors had a potent array of antibiotics at the ready. But those drugs—considered miraculous after Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928—have begun to lose their magic. Bacteria are increasingly becoming resistant, in part thanks to overuse, leaving doctors with few weapons to quell these infections, also known as superbugs. Such afflictions sicken at least 2 million Americans a year and kill 23,000, according to a rough estimate from the Centers for Disease Control in 2013. A British government report (PDF) in 2014 projected that, by mid-century, superbugs will kill more people than cancer.

 

 

News Date: 

Monday, July 24, 2017