Modern Medicine’s Sins of Omission: Thousands of Deaths Due to Antibiotic Resistance Could Have Been Averted
By Bill Sardi
November 3, 2021
Antibiotic Resistant Infections Could Have Been Quelled Decades Ago With Vitamin E & The Trace Mineral Selenium
Modern medicine pays little attention to promising scientific studies that point to inexpensive medical technologies that do not generate outrageous profits. Economical cures are closeted because they don’t pay the bills. Only a few savvy patients catch on and dare to use natural medicines without medical guidance. Short of making many doctors cab drivers, a number of modern maladies could be quelled with nickel and dime cures if patients only knew of alternatives.
Human populations could be living longer and healthier lives if all the ignored medical technology were to be put into practice.
There are many examples. Exposure of one will serve to make this point.
The vitamin/mineral cure for a deadly infection
Recently Stanford University School of Medicine researchers eradicated the dreaded nursing home bacterium Clostridium difficile in laboratory animals without the use of a sterilizing antibiotic that destroys gut bacteria and eradicates good bacteria along with the bad. Not to mention the avoidance of antibiotic resistance that repeated use of antibiotics pose.
Globally Clostridium difficile infects more than 250,000 Americans who end up hospitalized, induces 15,000 deaths/year and costs an estimated $4 billion a year to treat. This new treatment simply disables the deadly bacterium rather than eradicate good and bad bacteria altogether, and at an economical price.
An estimated 750,000 people die annually from drug-resistant infections.
Because of antibiotic resistance, the antibiotic Vancomycin is held in abeyance for treatment of stubborn drug resistant infections.
Germ resistance for various antibiotics is of grave concern. Rifampin and tigecycline exhibit germ resistance of 37.0%; ciprofloxacin 95%; moxifloxacin 32%; clindamycin 59%; tetracycline 20%. Because Vancomycin is kept in reserve, germ resistance is ~1%.
Drug resistance in cases of Clostridium difficile infection, renamed Clostridioides difficile, is now occurring outside of hospital settings, though it is widely known as the most common cause of acute diarrhea illness in nursing homes.
C-Diff erupts after antibiotic therapy
In one study, 33% of long-term care patients were found to have acquired C. difficile within 2 weeks after antibiotic therapy. Yes, antibiotics sterilize the digestive tract leaving the patient prone to the next bacterium that may populate in the patient, in many instances C-Diff, as it is abbreviatedly called.
Even without an outbreak of C-Diff its prevalence ranges from 4% to 20% on long-term care facilities. Surprisingly elderly residents with C-Diff are most often asymptomatic, which suggests some inborne protective factor, which is the subject of this report.
To make matters worse among nursing home patients treated with antibiotics for C-Diff, 26% were found be experience recurrence. Hand washing, isolation, and other measures have been ineffective in halting this dreaded disease.
The non-antibiotic cure
When Stanford researchers injected a toxin exuded by C-Diff into lab animals, they all died within 48 hours after instillation of the toxin. But when they injected an antioxidant drug called Ebselen, all the animals survived.
In lab dish studies, Ebselen has been shown to exhibit potent bactericidal activity against Vancomycin-resistant bacteria.
Just precisely what is Ebselen?
Ebselen is a selenium compound that mimics an internal enzymatic antioxidant called glutathione peroxidase (pronunciation). Selenium is also a dietary trace mineral also available as a dietary supplement.
But hold your enthusiasm. Modern medicine is dragging its feet. All this was reported in 2015!
Ebselen under study for Covid-19
Ebselen is not confined to treatment of Clostridium difficile.
Unsurprisingly, Ebselen, produced by Sound Pharmaceuticals Inc. (privately held company), is now in studies to employ its prescription antioxidant for prevention of Covid-19 coronavirus infection, prevention of Covid being something vaccines have not accomplished.
Over 10,000 chemical compounds were screened for use against Covid-19 infections and Ebselen was identified as a particularly promising inhibitor of the main invasive protease (pronunciation) that facilitates invasive entrance of viruses like Covid-19 into cells (viruses not being alive and needing to enter living cells to replicate).
Selenium improves the cure rate for Covid-19 by up to 500%.
An article in Science Magazine published in 2017 entitled “The Weirdness Of Ebselen,” stated Ebselen, by virtue of its trace mineral content (selenium) “is not a drug.” That is true, it is a patentable form of selenium.
Ebselen is a synthetic mimic of an antioxidant that is naturally produced in the human body from the trace mineral selenium. Glutathione peroxidase or GPx as it is abbreviately called, detoxifies hydrogen peroxide that is naturally produced in the body.
GPx discovery ignored
Internal synthesis of glutathione peroxidase was first identified in 1957. The entire era of antibiotic resistance has unfolded over the past five decades since this natural GPx antioxidant enzyme was discovered when GPx could have been utilized instead. GPx is bigger than the discovery of penicillin, though few laymen or even physicians would know that.
The provision of selenium to trace-mineral-deficient lab animals increases internal glutathione peroxidase synthesis. The trace mineral selenium works to produce GPx which detoxifies hydrogen peroxide that is naturally produced as a cleansing agent in the body.
Alternately, vitamin E directly inhibits peroxide, so the idea of combining vitamin E with selenium is advantageous and is commonly accomplished by taking a daily multivitamin that provides vitamin E + selenium. According to a recent study vitamin E + selenium appears to produce synergistic (greater than additive) protection against hydrogen peroxide.
Depletion of vitamin E and/or selenium would increase the hydrogen peroxide levels.
What generates hydrogen peroxide?
The consumption of polyunsaturated fats, such as from corn oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, flaxseed oil, or fish oil, increases the production of peroxides and the need for vitamin E and selenium. These are healthy oils, but when oxidized can spell problems.
Hydrogen peroxide is continuously produced in the human body, primarily in the lung, gut and thyroid gland. This is the same hydrogen peroxide purchased at drug stores and used to cleanse wounds, though it is naturally produced at wound sites.
Hydrogen peroxide chemically is H2O2, which converts to H2O or harmless water via the enzyme catalase secreted from the liver, which is why it is safely used as an antiseptic.
Most people already infected with C-Diff.
What is more startling to learn is that the digestive tract of most Americans is already infected with Clostridium difficile. Healthy digestive tracts resist growth of C-Diff.
Instead of treating C-Diff with selenium and vitamin E, or with synthetic glutathione peroxidase (Ebselen), modern medicine drums up fecal bacterial transplants. These “poop” pills that deliver fecal bacteria cost ~$2000 per dose. How absurd.
How did C-Diff become so prominent?
The C-Diff epidemic runs parallel to the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup, first marketed in the early 1970s. Fructose serves as a growth medium for C-Diff. Good God, someone ought to be banning high-fructose corn sugar-sweetened foods (peanut butter, bacon, soft drinks, yogurt, baked goods, fast foods) from nursing home diets, if not altogether from sweetened foods.
Do Americans consume enough selenium & vitamin E?
According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, the average daily selenium intake in Americans aged 2 and older from foods is 108.5 micrograms and from foods and supplements is 120.8 micrograms. Selenium deficiency is said to be rare in the US.
But obviously, with recognition of the growing problem of antibiotic resistance and growing numbers of C-Diff infections and deaths, selenium intake is insufficient to achieve prevention, particularly among individuals who produce more peroxides (fructose eaters) and vitamin E-deficient individuals.
It is estimated that greater than 90% of Americans are not meeting vitamin E intake recommendations. While most Americans do not have overt vitamin E deficiency, their intake of vitamin E is sub-optimal and may not be sufficient when challenged by over-consumption of fructose sugar and high poly-unsaturated fats, especially when combined with infection.
An estimated 81% of 31-50-year old presumably healthy Americans consume suboptimal amounts of vitamin E, which could entirely explain why seemingly health young-to-middle-aged adults die of Covid-19!
How many more Americans will die needlessly before high-fructose corn syrup is banned and foodstuffs are fortified with adequate amounts of selenium and vitamin E?
The US fortifies infant formula with selenium and flour and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals with vitamin E. The World Health Organization does not have any recommendations for food fortification with vitamin E.
Bottom line
What adjectives can be used to explain all this? Dereliction? Disregard? Negligence? Neglect? Greed?
Bottom line: in an era of antibiotic/germ resistance and use of high-fructose sweetened beverages and foods as well as consumption of polyunsaturated fats (corn oil, etc.), don’t wait for public health authorities to take action. Take responsibility for your own health and consume a multivitamin that provides adequate amounts of vitamin E (200 mg/IU) and selenium (100-200 mcg) for you and your children. Selenium and vitamin E food fortification should be mandated, not Covid-19 vaccines.
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