Venom and hot peppers offer a key to killing resistant bacteria
Comments
charliebwrites
jolt42
I always assumed what I felt was obvious: Numbers 21:4-9, where God instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole to heal Israelites dying from poisonous snake bites.
Ar-Curunir
But the symbol is explicitly non-abrahamic in origin…
jolt42
And yet the similarities can't be coincidental. Rod + Snake = Life Saving.
Ar-Curunir
Not sure what you’re trying to say? That the Greeks got it from a Semitic people? Or something else?
jolt42
"The universe is rarely so lazy"
realo
Sorry but the bible is not a historic document.
If you want to read old texts a bit more grounded in reality try the Kama Sutra ... ;)
nelox
The Bible contains many verifiable historical references supported by archaeology and ancient records, even as a primarily theological text. Here are three examples:
1. The Tel Dan Stele and the House of David
This 9th-century BCE inscription records an Aramean king’s victories over the “king of Israel” and the “king of the House of David.” It gives the earliest extra-biblical proof of the Davidic dynasty at the heart of the Hebrew Bible.
2. Sennacherib’s Prism and Hezekiah
The prism names “Hezekiah the Judahite,” details the capture of 46 cities, and describes besieging Jerusalem in 701 BCE, closely matching 2 Kings 18–19, including the tribute paid.
3. The Pilate Stone and Pontius Pilate
Found at Caesarea Maritima, this inscription names “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea” under Tiberius, directly confirming the Roman official who tried Jesus in the Gospels.
These independent sources from rival powers strongly support the Bible’s historical value where evidence exists.
nullsanity
[dead]
MrFots
The Christian Bible is not a historical document.
jolt42
That wouldn't prevent the caduceus from being based on the story.
silveira
It seems that it's quire more complicated than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus_as_a_symbol_of_medici...
caminanteblanco
I thought the predominant one was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius
sandworm101
I was taught that the symbol came from Egypt, specifically a reference to standard guinea worm treatment whereby the worm was extracted from under the skin by winding it around a stick.
canadiantim
I suspect the symbol has deeper roots than that, though you are likely right about the snake venom being used then to treat illness.
koolba
I thought it’s a stick to pull out a tape worm. You wrap it around the worm and keep twisting to get it out.
croisillon
now do the "save to disk" symbol
orangebread
And then you have a ready-made worm kabob, ready to roast and eat! Infinite food exploit unlocked.
cjbgkagh
I’m partial to the Guinea worm medical symbol theory, though happy to be convinced otherwise.
eth0up
There's a strange, quiet conflict among old school medical professionals regarding the rod of Asclepius vs the Caduceus. Interesting topic
RataNova
Medicine has always borrowed from biology's more dangerous toolkit
boringg
We also recently (we think) discovered why acupuncture works. That form of medicine from 4000 years ago...
baxtr
Huh. We did? Could you share a link to a paper? Curious to find out about the "why".
pelf
Do you happen to have a source for that? I’d love to check it.
tmoertel
It's the New York Times article that's linked to in this HN post about “the Interstitium”:
NDlurker
Radiolab did a show on that a couple years ago. Pretty interesting listen.
https://radiolab.org/podcast/interstitium
They also did an episode about rapamycin that I thought was really cool. I had no idea the history of it and found it fascinating and it really gets the imagination going thinking about what other things are hidden all around us.
om2
That article doesn’t explain why acupuncture works, just gives a hint of a possible mechanism. It also doesn’t contain any evidence that acupuncture works at all (other than as a placebo).
kelipso
There’s also electroacupuncture, which is gaining popularity in physical therapy clinics in the US.
> Like traditional acupuncture, electroacupuncture uses needles placed in the same spots. Then, a small electrode is attached to the needles. A small amount of electricity runs through the electrode and gives a slight vibration or soft hum during treatment. (1)
Since they use the same spots as traditional acupuncture even now, I would think traditional acupuncture does work to some degree.
(1) https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/cbd-cbn-what-is-differ...
soperj
I read a paper that basically said that the spot itself didn't matter so much, that part was voodoo, but the needling produced a response from your body that helped.
cyberax
I did a course of dry needling for tendon inflammation. It's basically just poking tendons with needles. It's an accepted treatment and it works, but the spots don't matter at all (as long as they are in the same area).
It's just relying on poking stuff with needles to improve the blood flow.
awesome_dude
Um, the spots do seem to have some importance - there's little point jabbing your left temple if, as you say, the aim is to improve the blood flow to your ankles
blendergeek
Your reference seems to be about CBD, not "electro acupuncture"
kelipso
Here you go buddy. Webmd or google links issue, who knows. https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-electroacupunc...
jjk166
I imagine the long term solution to antibiotic resistance are engineered bacteriophages, either to directly attack the bacteria or to insert genes that make the bacteria susceptible to specific agents. Beyond not having to continuously develop new antibiotics or restrict treatment, these could also be much more targeted treatments with less harmful effects on a patient's microbiome. Of course scaling up to mass production on the level of say penicillin will take some time, but the same is true for new antibiotics.
shellfishgene
But bacteria also become resistant against phages, you would still have to continuously develop new ones.
Intralexical
I have no idea if this is true, but I remember seeing in a Kurzgesagt video that developing phage resistance reduces antibiotic resistance, and vice versa. So you might corner bacteria by using both.
jjk166
Improving phages is dramatically easier - you can just modify an existing one, either through direct engineering or by evolution, rather than having to find a brand new chemical that conveniently does what you want without serious negative drawbacks. 20 years ago the difficulty may have been comparable but the engineering tools for creating synthetic phages have advanced extremely rapidly.
And particularly if you are introducing a vulnerability instead of directly attacking the bacteria with the phage, there is no evolutionary pressure to become resistant until the phage has already done its job. You can even go further and have it insert genes that confer an advantage in addition to the susceptibility, so that even if some of the bacteria are by chance naturally resistant to the phage they get outcompeted prior to the deployment of the killing agent.
RataNova
I agree phages are probably part of the answer
pshirshov
"Researchers have developed", yeah. When I read such things, I always recall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimerox - this thing promised wonders - very broad spectrum, very low toxicity - and, most importantly, it was targeting a conservative essential protein - so nearly zero resistance. And there were no updates for more than a decade.
Something developed in a lab is something we, most likely, will never see - and will never know why the thing didn't reach the 2nd stage (or the 1st).
kingkawn
This is because a broad spectrum antibiotic with low resistance is an essential public good that will likely rapidly be made generic by either legal action or international disregard for copyright law. So no major pharma companies will want to invest resources into the development of something like this, and governments are not under the gun enough to produce new abx to invest the billions needed to get it through the approval process. The compromise is to leave it sitting at this phase until some disaster creates enough public incentive to socialize the completion of its development.
maxbond
Is this particular drug head and shoulders above other candidates? Is it possible that the reason it hasn't gotten attention is because researchers have been looking at other cheaper or more promising candidates? (I do not know, I am genuinely asking.)
pshirshov
Same thing - I do not know. It got pretty decent media coverage back then - and nothing since.
cubefox
Similar thing, permanent anti-cavity bacteria:
https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-rise-and-impending-fall-of-th...
The patents expired, so nobody can raise the hundreds of millions to do the phase II/III safety trials.
fakedang
It depends - if someone uses the same compound but provably for a different indication (like maybe anti-periodontic diseases or something) or for a different intake mechanism, they could get another patent and proceed with trials.
Granted, it's not going to be easy because the original patent has expired so it's going to be very easy for an upstart Indian company to conduct basic clinical trials, use part of the data of the second patent's holder to prove equivalency (they did this test so we don't need to do this test), and then get approved through an accelerated pathway in the FDA. Which is why even well-capitalized players will shy away from what could be a cash cow.
cubefox
Anti-periodontic diseases are highly irrelevant compared to cavities. Not even the original cavity application did manage to get enough funding at the time. So there will be no Indian upstart, there is and likely will be nobody who invests the money into ultra expensive trials. The ship has sailed.
fakedang
I wasn't trying to quote a directly applicable example, just wanted to illustrate a potential pathway for post-expiry commercialization.
arcticfox
This story actually checks out, which is quite the condemnation of our American drug development system.
One thing bugs me though - why don't other countries with different research structures pick this up and run with it?
toast0
I agree... Medication Resistant bacteria is a problem everywhere. There's probably no money in a new antibiotic, but... Having something new to fight TB would be nice, and there's still prestige, even if you "just" brought it to market and didn't discover it.
I would think there are pharma teams in China or India, maybe even Russia that could replicate and further develop something like this, given the initial paper and PR.
awesome_dude
My immediate thought - there probably are these teams overseas doing these things - just, our media/markets shun them.
I mean, the covid vaccinations - people are/were doing their nut about the Euro/US versions, but the Russians had their own, the Chinese had two, and I am aware that the Chinese were handing it out to other countries as part of their aid programs (the effectiveness of those vaccines, however, has been questioned, especially in comparison to the Euro/US ones, but I'm not sure if that's reality or politics, it's so damned hard to tell these days)
elzbardico
American salaries and research funding are way bigger. The best scientists around the world have a strong incentive to emigrate. And the ones who don't, can't do much with the scarce funds they have, compared to America.
cyberax
> This story actually checks out, which is quite the condemnation of our American drug development system.
Oh yeah, "corporations", "end-stage capitalism", blah blah.
The reality is that 95+% of drug candidates fail the trials. And a lot of them only fail during the Phase-3 where the efficacy is tested. It's likely that large companies tried it in-house and found that it's either too toxic or is ineffective in-vivo.
vazma
I guess you are right but can you please provide a source of the failed trials for this case!
cyberax
Looks like there are none, which is the typical result. If you worked in a drug-discovery-adjacent field, this is an utterly normal scenario:
1. University/startup company finds a promising drug candidate that works in-vitro. They make a press-release, researchers write their theses, and move on.
2. Drug companies pick that up and run small-scale tests. These tests are negative, usually because of unexpected toxicity.
Looking at the molecule in question, it's likely what happened here. It's a covalent inhibitor, meaning that it permanently binds with the protein. It's also allosteric, meaning that it binds to the target enzyme but not at the actual active site. This is a huge red flag for toxicity, because it's likely going to bind to other proteins that can have similar configurations.
3. But the underlying idea is sound, so companies keep working on alternative approaches. They are likely looking for non-covalent compounds now, or for things like "suicide inhibitors".
4. You'll see actual trials in 10-15 years after the initial press-release. Most likely for completely different compounds, targeting the same mechanism.
awesome_dude
There was what I thought was a breakthrough in Schizophrenia diagnosis and treatment - the University of Washington held that groups of genes acting in concert were causing the disease, and, in fact, there were multiple variants of genes producing (what had always been suspected) different diseases that were bing lumped together.
For the longest time I had been trying to figure out why nobody was taking the research seriously, why there weren't diagnostic kits available that determined which variant people were actually suffering from, and using the appropriate drug regime to manage the specific condition the patient had.
Then, last year I saw a paper being discussed (some 5 - 10 years after the initial paper), and it was building on the Washington research - it appears to me now (keeping in mind that I am a layman and an outsider) that the research /had/ been taken seriously, but it's seen as a signpost on the pathway rather than the destination.
NDlurker
It was pretty common for message board users to come together to do group buys for novel research chemical synthesis 15-20 years ago. Not sure why things like this would be any different.
katzito
Can't make moneyz if it works too wellz.
strbean
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stranded_RNA_activated_...
This one is quite tinfoil-hat inspiring, as the research was moved to defense-focused Draper Labs and then immediately disappeared.
eth0up
I have struggled with various infections over the last 15 years. One of them, among the worst being h-pylori. Of all these infections, I've been forced, due to absence of healthcare and aversion to the medical industry in general, to treat myself across the board.
H Pylori is a very interesting subject, deeply misunderstood until a certain Australian hero brute forced through the arrogance of the day by infecting himself to prove ulcers weren't the product of psychosomatics.
Ending the rant there, I discovered through research that capsaicin (only one of the virtues of peppers) has a manifold effect upon various bacteria, notably pylori. Aside from encouraging the pylori to swim away from the capsaicin, it disrupts their biofilm behavior, and empirically, can drastically help with ulcers counter to expected problems with its spicy nature.
Adjacently, it can also encourage mucosal stimulation and protection.
I've found, co administered with mastic, oregano, NAC, and a few things presently inaccessible to the ol' cabbage.... Ahh, that's one... Cabbage juice! -- the infection can be reduced to sustainable levels without conventional antibiotics. Modern research is suggesting that h pylori, partly due to its ubiquity (50% of population +) and the ravages of antibiotics, it may be best to simply reduce it to manageable levels where the immune system and general well being keep it controlled.
There is also the wonder of fermented chilies which is good for many things, includes probiotics, improves most meals and really irritates assholes, which is righteous.
m348e912
Cabbage juice is very promising in helping with number of gut related issues due to it's anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-inflammatory properties. Organic green cabbage, freshly juiced seems to be the most effective, but wow does it create a stink and doesn't taste great. I am not sure how someone take it regularly without crashing out and giving up.
loudandskittish
Oh, cool, so another thing I was avoiding due to H Pylori actually could've helped... (but seriously, thanks for posting this).
metalman
recently here, there was an article suggesting that combining hot chilies, with mint, acentuated the anti inflamitory effects of capsaicin by 100 times, and reminds me that I was waiting for my mint to come up, which it will most definitly have done, and I have fresh chillies so the bar is very very low to try it for taste, if nothing else.
varispeed
I am addicted to hot peppers. What I do in the morning is get one Scotch Bonnet (or two smaller ones), two oranges, lime and a piece of ginger into a cold press and then drink it in one go.
Can't describe it exactly, but it's like being transported to another dimension for a few seconds, then there is pain, then there is relief and then a nice warm feeling in the belly.
uejfiweun
I too am addicted to hot peppers. But doesn't this... IDK, it seems like it would mess up my stomach or esophagus lining or something. All that acid and capsaicin on an empty stomach?
varispeed
I've been doing this for like two years now and see no adverse effects, but that is just me.
sosborn
I would be worried about long term damage. In 10 years you might be in a world of hurt from this. At the very least I would let your doctor know that you are doing this and see what they think of it.
riknos314
If your intestinal lining is healthy, there's probably not much to worry about.
If it hurts while just sitting in your gut that's probably a red flag that something about your digestive system is off.
t-3
Billions of people eat spicy foods on a daily basis without any issues. As long as he doesn't rub peppers into his eyes or bathe in hot sauce he'll be fine.
sosborn
How many billions of people start their day by getting one Scotch Bonnet (or two smaller ones), two oranges, lime and a piece of ginger into a cold press and then drinking it in one go on an empty stomach?
t-3
No idea, but I often eat hot peppers in every meal of the day. I'd expect any possible issues to arise from chugging it one go and not priming the digestive system through mastication, but I can't imagine any real problems - after all, there are many types of drinks containing peppers.
tombert
I don't generally love super spicy food (the most I do like 95% of the time is the Taco Bell Fire Sauce), but every now and than I want something really spicy.
I'm not sure why this is the case, but I'll go to a place with some Habanero sauce and get that on a meal. It will hurt (and my time in the bathroom the next day might be a little unpleasant), but it satisfies the urge.
MyHonestOpinon
I know if my Mexican wife is angry depending on how hot is the food and the sauces that she makes. I have also learned that very hot sauces can damage your nails as you scratch the walls the next day.
tombert
Funnily enough, my wife is Mexican and I think I have a higher tolerance for spicy food than she does. She won't even do the Taco Bell Fire Sauce.
MyHonestOpinon
That is a bit suspicious. How accurate is she with the chancla at long range?
tombert
Impressively accurate, as I have discovered.
halapro
The last time I bit into a nice juicy spicy pepper in the morning, I had to crouch in pain for 5 minutes as I felt stabbed right in the heart. The pepper wasn't even spicy like a bonnet, but I had an empty stomach.
So yeah no more peppers without rice for me.
stickfigure
"If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either you or the frog for the rest of the day."
butlike
Here's me hoping this is a hint that hot peppers kill a lot of things: resistant bacteria, cancers, inflamed cells, etc. since I love them so.
RataNova
Nature is probably still one of the best drug discovery libraries we have
flobosg
My favorite antibiotic is fire.
jjk166
I'm partial to concentrated ethanol.
alkyon
"The team was able to isolate two colorless molecules called benzoquinones—heterocyclic compounds that do not contain amino acids"
Hats off, not only were they able to isolate just two molecules, but also established that they were colorless.
I don't think this is a usual definition for benzoquinones:
"heterocyclic compounds that do not contain amino acids".
I can smell Sam Altman's socks reading this article.
kees99
"colorless molecules called benzoquinones"
...and then dozen of words further on:
"blue benzoquinone has the capacity to act against the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, while the red one is effective against Staphylococcus aureus."
How quaint! Blue colorless molecule is different from the red colorless molecule!
aposm
Maybe you should not omit those "dozens of words" that clearly explain what you're trying to portray as a contradiction.
> These molecules have a particular property: When they come into contact with air, they oxidize and change color. One becomes blue and the other red.
kees99
You are absolutely right.
Maybe I shouldn't. But then I have to deep-dive into yet another flagrant cheap hallucination. You see, when a molecule oxidize, it becomes a different molecule.
It is impossible for a benzoquinone to oxidize, yet remain a benzoquinone. There are just two of them [1], and the two are isomers [2]. Transforming one into another would be isomerisation, not oxidation.
Not to mention — "oxidize on contact with air" is such a pile of nonsense. Just look at those things: benzene ring with a couple of oxygens sticking from it. [1] That stuff is pretty darn stable in presence of atmospheric oxygen.
wolvoleo
The red hot chilli peppers are also good against depression so I'm not surprised
throwa356262
And here I was believing that psychic spices from China steal your mind's elation
obsidian_spider
[dead]
aliljet
[dead]
If you’ve ever wondered why the symbol of health is a snake spiraling a staff (the Greek god Asclepius’s staff to be specific), it’s because in Ancient Greece they used small amounts of snake venom to treat serious illnesses
We’ve come full circle