Related to the discussion of resistance is an article in the NY Times today [1] discussing the development of Salmonella infections in humans which may be antibiotic resistant. These bacteria are theorized to be the product of fish farm overuse of antibiotics in SE Asia leading to resistant salmonella in aquarium fish leading to human transfer. They may have 5 resistance genes to various types of antibiotics. A more general information source is [2].
<br><br>This raises one point that should be made with respect to antibacterial cocktails vs. viral cocktails. Viruses, for the most part, have extremely compact genomes. They do not easily add genes to bypass or eliminate drugs being used to prevent their replication. Bacteria on the other hand are quite comfortable adding genes because they don't have the genome size constraints that viruses do. So evolving resistance in viruses generally means that you have to mutate the existing genome (and not break anything in the process) while evolving resistance in bacteria simply means that you have to incorporate resistance genes that may have evolved long ago in the environment. Mind you bacteria tend to have defenses against incorporating foreign DNA (as defenses against bacteriophages) but once those have been worked around there is little selection pressure for bacteria to lose genes which may be useful in some particular environment. So the long term evolutionary path for bacteria is to develop and spread antibiotic resistance at a much higher rate than viruses will be able to manage.
<br><br>Robert<br><br>1. "Nemo Beware: Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella"<br><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/health/18cons.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/health/18cons.html</a><br>2. Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics
<br><a href="http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/">http://www.tufts.edu/med/apua/</a><br><br>