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The post Combating the rise of the superbugs: The health and scientific challenges of antibiotic resistance appeared first on Australian Science.
]]>There is a problem though, bacteria are great survivors and have been competing against other bacteria and microorganisms for billions of years. As Professor Matt Cooper from the University of Queensland puts it “Billions of years ago, bacterial species were engaged in an arms race against each other and the chemicals they developed to kill one another have been modified into today’s antibiotics”.1
Unfortunately it’s our overuse of these important drugs which has driven the rapid development of antibiotic resistance, the process whereby bacteria containing mutations in their DNA, that provide some protection from an antibiotic, have an enormous survival advantage when exposed to the antibiotic and pretty soon dominate. Frequent exposures to the antibiotic may further strengthen these survival traits via the selection process, rendering the the drug less effective over time. It’s a great example of random variations leading to non-random adaptions through natural selection, although one with profound consequences for human health.
Of particular concern are bacteria that have developed resistance to multiple types of antibiotics, resulting in particularly dangerous resistant bacteria such as the multi-drug resistant variants of tuberculosis, that are extremely difficult to treat. Indeed leading health authorities are so worried about the problem that the Chief Medical Officer of the UK, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has recently labelled the threat as “catastrophic
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The post Combating the rise of the superbugs: The health and scientific challenges of antibiotic resistance appeared first on Australian Science.
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The post An outdated appetite control system in a rapidly evolving world? appeared first on Australian Science.
]]>And why should we care?
In the developed world, for the lucky majority at least, calorie-dense food has never been more accessible. Want a pizza? Just use an app from your smartphone to order one delivered any time, day or night. The one big problem with this–human appetite has evolved over tens of thousands of years when food was tough to come by, and we had to work physically hard for a meal, now we just go to the fridge. However the series of long developed processes that drive appetite have not caught up in this time of plenty thereby contributing to the modern day upsurge in obesity.
Obesity as a global problem
Obesity is a global disease on the increase, the World Health Organisation estimates that by 2015 there will be an astounding 700 million adults classified as obese. From a health viewpoint this is particularly worrying as obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, Type-2 diabetes and some cancers.
Also concerning, is the number of people in developing countries at risk, where the bane of obesity joins established under-nutrition. Dr Ranjan Yajnik, the director of the diabetes unit at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Pune, was recently reported by ABC News saying, “Populations which have faced under-nutrition for a long time are now exposed to the over-nutrition of the modern world through globalisation and westernisation”.
In short, it’s the modern world and how we live in it which is driving up rates of obesity.
An unbalanced system?
In broad terms, the body is wired to protect against starvation and low food availability, by increasing biological and sensory processes that promote the need to eat. This makes sense, after all starvation is an immediate threat to survival and was by far one of the greatest concerns of our ancient ancestors. As excessive food was less of a concern, the regulatory processes to protect against excess consumption and weight gain appear less effective, leading to the body favouring weight gain over weight loss.
Combine this with the increased availability of highly palatable foods, and the ability to stop eating when full is increasingly difficult. According to Dr. Joanne Harrold and colleagues, in a recent paper published in the journal Neoropharmacology, this may be especially true for many obese people, who may “possess an over-responsiveness to the reward effects of eating, which results in the appetite system of these people being effectively overwhelmed
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The post An outdated appetite control system in a rapidly evolving world? appeared first on Australian Science.
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