Antibiotic resistance, examined

I never fully understood the gravity of antibiotic resistance until recently. Growing up, my family and I didn’t use many antibiotics – only when we were sick with a legitimate bacterial infection did we ever occasionally take pencillin when it was prescribed to us. My parents made sure to stress that we should always finish our antibiotics, never leaving any left. As a result, I didn’t know that so many people were so careless or misinformed as to not finish their prescriptions; I thought that was something people only joked about. Now, after reading an article published by The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, discussing The Lancet report on antimicrobial resistance, I see that misuse and overprescription of antibiotics is a very scary thing (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation).

The article summarizes the scary findings of the antimicrobial resistance study. It mentions that antimicrobial resistance has become the leading cause of death world wide (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). They estimated that in 2019, more than one million people passed away as a result of antimicrobial resistance (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). I couldn’t believe this, as I’m so used to considering cancer, heart disease, and COVID as the leading causes of death. I’ve never thought that, cross-sectionally, something like antibiotic resistance could be the leading cause of global death (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). While we might not feel its effects as much in the United States, its causing great pain in less developed nations (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation).

Image courtesy of Nature.

Something that The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation mentioned stood out to me. They said that the diseases most assisted by antibiotic resistance were “lower respiratory and bloodstream” infections like pneumonas (The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). I decided to do a bit more research on this, and I found an article by Nature, published in 2022 that listed the diseases that are the most deadly when it comes to deaths related to antibiotic resistance (Nature). Much to my surprise, they were almost all diseases we have studied in class. They go on to list E. coli, S. aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Streptococcous pneumoniae as the top four responsible for the greatest percentages of antibiotic-death (Nature). This definitely worried me, as in class we have discussed the great prevalence and high transmissability of these diseases. I can only hope that as we go forward, we will recognize how great a threat antimicrobial resistance poses to our society and work to combat it in some way.

An in-depth look into Mrs. Meyer’s Multisurface Cleaner

Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multipurpose cleaner has been a STAPLE in my house for the last five years. Its impeccable scent, plus its seemingly magical ability to relieve every surface of stickiness and grime, has earned it a permanent place in our cleaning supply closet. Not only that, but we regularly purchase her hand soaps, candles, wipes, and more. One bottle costs $4.29 straight from her website, and their main selling point is that they use non-toxic, family friendly ingredients. The back of the bottle states that their products are made without “parabens & phthalates, glycol solvents, formaldehyde, and artificial colors.” Upon further investigation, I could not find any reputable sources elaborating on the toxicity of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multipurpose Cleaner, but instead, found it cited on numerous articles as one of the “Top 10” non-toxic products to try.

Photos: Sarah Lindsay

Not only could I not find any negative news on Mrs. Meyer’s, but the bottle also states that it is a USDA Certified BioBased Product. Truthfully, I am not entirely certain what this means, but it’s definitely used as a selling point for their products. When using this cleaner, I have definitely been just sanitizing, and not disinfecting, my counters. I think disinfecting something is honestly not realistic or necessary in a household setting. Sanitizing my counters is enough for me! Moreover, the cleaner does not SAY it is a disinfectanct, so I doubt it even has the capacity to disinfect. In fact, upon close examination of the bottle, it mentions nothing about killing microbes at all and simply states that it is “tough on dirt and grime.” Essentially, this multisurface cleaner mainly exists to eliminate tangible dirt from your counters and nothing more.

For the “How To” portion of this blog post, I visited a site called “The Thrifty Couple.” Their article called “Homemade Natural Antibacterial Spray Cleaner (For Cleaning And Personal Use)” gave recipe on how to make your own antibacterial wipes (The Thrifty Couple). The author goes on to talk about how she loves essential oils, which was an immediate red flag to me (The Thrifty Couple)! The recipe for antimicrobial wipes consisted of only water, tea tree oil, lavender oil, lemon oil, and oregano oil (The Thrifty Couple). After examining this list of ingredients, I am quite confident that this spray and its wipes will have virtually no effect on bacteria. None of the ingredients listed would ever be able to eradicate the cell wall of a microbe or penetrate its envelope.

The Variants, Explained

Throughout the course of the recent pandemic, I feel as though I have recevied more education in the greek alphabet than ever before! Titles such as gamma, alpha, omicron, and delta were thrown around incessantly, yet I never truly understood what they meant until I studied them more closely. I knew that viruses tended to mutate thanks to the four times I’ve watched the movie Contagion, but I didn’t know how this applied to our current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. An article by The New York Times was able to shed some light on the topic for me. It explained that viruses are constantly mutating, and a variant is deemed a variant when a collection of viruses all boast the same group of mutations.

In the case of the coronavirus, the mutations of concern occur in regards to the spike proteins (The New York Times). Through our studies in microbiology, I have learned that RNA viruses such as COVID-19 are much more prone to mutations than DNA viruses due to replicating errors. According to the World Health Organization, these errors effect the order of amino acids in a viruses’ RNA, triggering the development of different proteins. Scientists have been able to identify specific amino acid sequences of concern and watch them (World Health Organization). In class, we learned that this is the reason why being an RNA virus is considered a virulence factor, as changes in the proteins a virus produces can lead to it becoming more infectious or deadly.

The above graphic highlights important “clusters” of mutations in the Omicron coronavirus variant. Graphic courtesy of The New York Times.

As explained in The New York Times article, the Omicron variant has a unique combination of 50 mutations, 30 of which pertain to the spike proteins which “the coronavrius uses to attach to human cells” and infect them (The New York Times). In comparison to Omicron’s 50, the Delta variant was home to at least 12 mutattions that also modified the viruse’s spike proteins (The New York Times). These mutations contributed to the viruse’s abiltiy to dock onto a human cell as well (The New York Times). In increasing the virus’ abiltiy to attach to a human cell, the infection rate of the virus is increased, as it can more easily begin to replicate and take up residence in a human, causing illness (The New York Times). It is for this reason that the Delta variant and the Omicron variant became more prominent than the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, because these mutations enabled them to more rapidly spread and had a much lower infectious dose.

The gut microbiome and depression

We’ve all heard it before. Some foods are “brain foods,” others are “junk foods,” but before investigating the many effects of microbes in the gut, I brushed this off as merely a platitude. However, upon reading two articles from The New York Times and Science, I now know that there is strong evidence the microbiome is directly linked to depression and mental health (The New York Times, Science). While this evidence is not causal, it opens up a world of opportunities for investigation into potential new treatments for depression (Science). Additionally, these treatments provide hope of greater accessibility, as diets such as the “Mediterranean Diet” provide healthier options at an affordable price (The New York Times).

Graphic courtesy of Rocio Egio via The New York Times

The microbiota in the human gut may play a role in depression through the production of neurotransmitters, specifically catecholamines such as dopamine and biogenic amines like serotonin (The New York Times). These neurotransmitters play a large role in the development of depression, as deficiencies in both are often attributed to be a major cause of the disorder. Recent research has supported the plausablity of a brain-to-gut link via the vagus nerve that enables these microbiota to provide mental health benefits (Science). Additionally, research reported in Science has documented similar missing microbiota in people with depression and repeated these results within three different people groups (Science). Evidence such as this bolsters the hypothesis that differences in microbiota may contribute to the development of depression.

One stipulation of this research is that there is little to no understanding of whether microbiota are responsible for depression or merely a product of it (The New York Times). People with depression are may simply eat foods with higher fat content, leading to consistencies in their gut microbiomes (The New York Times). Moreover, a study conducted in which two groups of participants with depression were given equal amounts of counseling and support, but only one group was placed on the “Mediterranean Diet” in which they ate more seafoods, nuts, and vegetables found that participants who ate according to the diet reported higher levels of improvement than those in the control group (The New York Times). This evidence gives support to the theory that differences in microbiota precede depression and not the other way around (The New York Times). I am excited to learn more as research drives forward and hopefully produces new treatments for mental health disorders like depression.