rdrunner_74 t1_itv3wc8 wrote on October 26, 2022 at 3:10 PM

The person is not immune to antibiotics, but the bacteria he is infected with.

The first step would be to give the person an alternate antibiotic. Those are reserved for cases where the normal ones dont work. Often these do the trick. But some strains out there have created a broad spectrum immunity to them, so even the "spare" antibiotics wont work.

For example it is forbidden (in my country) to use these spares on animals, since they are needed to treat humans.

If even those backups dont work, you will be out of luck. You can now only be treated for the symptoms and hope that they wont kill you.

Here is an example of an immunity experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4sLAQvEH-M&t=2s&ab_channel=Veritasium

Edit:

Here is a short wiki about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drug_resistance

PlaidBastard t1_itvbkst wrote on October 26, 2022 at 4:00 PM

It's like having a house infested with ants that ant-poison won't kill anymore because you haphazardly used several kinds sequentially over time without successfully killing all of the ants ever, resulting in resistance to a variety of pesticides and unique behavioral responses to past agents, versus a house that ant poison has stopped functioning inside of. You've created a 'special ants' problem, not a 'special house' problem.

champdecap OP t1_itv4wdy wrote on October 26, 2022 at 3:16 PM

Thanks for the answer.

The_RealKeyserSoze t1_itxt2xe wrote on October 27, 2022 at 2:12 AM

>”If even those backups dont work, you will be out of luck. You can now only be treated for the symptoms and hope that they wont kill you.”

There are experimental phage therapies that do work sometimes. There are many case reports of people who survived multi drug resistant infections after a match was found in a phage library and then actually worked.

As antibiotic resistance continues to worsen phage therapies will continue to get more attention and funding.