New penicillin found in wallaby milk

[Celebration]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/New-penicillin-found-in-wallaby-milk/2006/04/23/1145730796727.html

Scientists have discovered a bacteria-fighting compound 100 times more effective than penicillin - in wallaby milk.

Researchers found the highly-potent compound, tagged AGG01, was active against a wide variety of fungi and bacteria including antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Research team leader Dr Ben Cocks said the discovery could have a profound impact on both human and animal health.

"This compound has the potential to be commercially synthesised and may prove vital in the war against increasingly resistant human and animal diseases," Dr Cocks said.

[eleny]

1. and it scares me

[shraby]

2. None too soon!!

We are about out of effective medicines against bacteria.

[crizzo5137]

3. Ack!

Does that mean i have to milk a wallaby? :)

[ToolTex]

4. No. It means you 'get' to milk a wallaby!

n/t

[Poll_Blind]

5. I smell a new Java/Flash game! n/t

PB

[Ecumenist]

6. I was just about to make a smart aleck comment about it being

new as opposed to old.. But this could be quite a find.

[Warpy]

7. Thank goodness somebody found SOMETHING

because resistant staph is now mutating into Vancomycin resistant staph, meaning we have absolutely nothing left to fight it save one highly toxic and highly restricted antibiotic.

I sincerely hope they keep this one in reserve, too, if it is developed. The mistake with antibiotics is that docs prescribed them for everything just to get rid of clamoring patients and screaming toddlers.

Plus, they were sold over the counter in developing countries. People would take the first 3 days of a 10 day course, feel better, stop taking the drug, and all the bugs left in their bodies would be resistant ones.

It's clear all the advances will come from socialized medicine. For profit medicine in the US has dozens of mood altering drugs and impotence cures in the works but ZERO new antibiotics.

[HuckleB]

8. Exactly.

A friend of mine has now gone through three different runs of different antibiotics to fight mastitis. It's a tale that seems to be repeated ad nauseum these days, as did the old tales of people stopping their antibiotics after a few days, as you note.