Bad News
Maybe you’d rather not know, but doctors in Mumbai, India have just announced their discovery of what they believe to be twelve cases of completely drug-resistant tuberculosis.
You read right: not drug-resistant or multi-drug resistant or even extensively drug-resistent, for even these grim labels let some hope glimmer through their seams. No, this is completely drug-resistant, as in, “off to the sanatorium with this one; they aren’t ever getting better.”
And if that weren’t scary enough, remember that these dozen patients only represent the cases Indian physicians have managed to detect. There are most certainly many more infected people who are completely unaware.
TB 1.0
How is this possible? We live in the 21st century for crying out loud! Isn’t TB easily cured these days?
Your surprise is not without warrant. By 1946, there was a medication available called Streptomycin that could treat and cure the types of phthisis that had been devastating humanity since time immemorial.
But this, you might say, was TB 1.0. There have been some critical updates over the last decades that have boosted TB’s potency. Strangely, we have the evolutionary pressure exerted by antibiotics to blame.
Evolution Strikes Back
Short generations, rapid reproduction, large numbers, and horizontal transfer (the ability to transmit genetic information directly from one individual to another instead of from parent to offspring) allow bacterial colonies to exploit mutations efficiently and, thus, adjust quickly when conditions turn hostile.
True to their name, antibiotics generally make life hard for bacteria. But genetic variation can allow some individual germs to thrive rather than die off. These, since they aren’t annihilated, are the ones who end up reproducing and passing on drug-resistant traits.
Just like that a human-crushing super-race is born.
Listen To Your Doctor On This One
Here’s a parting message to those who may be tempted to stop taking their medicine when they start feeling better:
Poor adherence to a particular drug regimen produces the perfect environment for this sort of evolutionary transition to happen. If you do get a bacterial infection of some sort and your physician writes you a prescription for an antibiotic, follow the instructions on the pill-bottle to a T.
Otherwise you might end up in a world of trouble.
Read More:
-New, Deadlier Form of TB Hits India (Times of India)
-India Reports Completely Drug-Resistant TB (Wired)
-Drug-Resistant TB (Centers for Disease Control)
-Superbug, Super-Fast Evolution (University of California, Berkeley)
