Surfers three times more likely to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria in guts

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/uoe-stt011118.php

by fern12 • 9 years ago

238 84 9 years ago

nightfly• 9 years ago

"The Beach Bums study asked 300 people, half of whom regularly surf the UK's coastline, to take rectal swabs" Good double meaning there.

mrfusion• 9 years ago

I wonder what the p value is. 9% vs 3% in a sample of 300 doesn’t sound that compelling.

eutectic• 9 years ago

about .025: http://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/Default2.aspx

itronitron• 9 years ago

Yeah, it would be interesting to do the same study in California and see if the percentage was higher or lower, they could even break it down by closest major city, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.

arkades4• 9 years ago

I couldn’t find 9 vs 3 in any of their published papers. Their most recent has 6 v 1.5 (p of .04) from a review of existing epi data, and not an original collection (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201...)

sshumaker• 9 years ago

Exactly my thinking. It's 0.0256 using a chi-squared test, which is definitely below the standard threshold.

yesenadam2• 9 years ago

Download link for the original paper:

http://libgen.io/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1016%2Fj.envint.2017....

yesenadam2• 9 years ago

For me, the most surprising bit was in the Conflicts of interest section:

"Professor Hawkey [from the Institution of Microbiology and Infection, University of Birmingham] reports grants and personal fees from Eumedica, grants and personal fees from Pfizer, personal fees from Merck, personal fees from Novartis, personal fees from Magus Communications, personal fees from Bio Merieux, personal fees from Wyth, from Becton Dickinson, personal fees from Novacta, personal fees from Novolytics, outside the submitted work."

Wow, I'm in the wrong business. /s

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

Amazing that doctors can get away with NOT disclosing any of that information when prescribing any medicine to patients. I would certainly want to know what they get from X when they prescribe a certain drug with other alternatives around.

clueless123• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, I do not need to see a study to know that the waters near Lima (Where I live & surf) are full of crap.. That said, the healthy effects of the exercising on the sea must counteract the bacteria, because I don't know a healthier group than the surfing community around here.

jpuderer• 9 years ago

I'm also living in Lima, learning to surf and bodyboard, and was getting pretty excited about it.

Two weeks ago the water was dark brown. Point taken, but... shrug? Like you said, seems like the merits of the exercise outweigh the downsides.

DoreenMichele7• 9 years ago

That said, the healthy effects of the exercising on the sea must counteract the bacteria

That was my initial thought as well, basically.

Cystic fibrosis is a deadly genetic disorder that makes one vulnerable to infection. Last I checked, the life expectancy was about 37 in the US, though someone on HN recently said it is now age 40.

People with CF who surfed had such a better prognosis than average that it led to development of a non drug treatment where they inhale nebulized saline solution as a treatment.

I think a better solution is just consume good quality sea salt. That's what I did to good effect. But everyone tells me that's anecdotal, whereas the existence of hypertonic saline solution as a medically prescribed treatment for my deadly condition is sciency or something. (There is probably a better way to say that, but I can't think of it at the moment.)

arkades4• 9 years ago

...because patients with CF have hypotonic secretions in the lungs, resulting in mucous plugging, and the inhalation of a hypertonic solution into the same space would cause a fluid shift that would dilute the aforementioned mucous... which is to say, it’s an empirically-verified intervention with a solid grounding in the underlying pathophysiology. Whereas just eating sea salt has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

Which is to say, it’s anecdotal -and- not grounded in an underlying reasoning that makes sense in the context of the disease.

zaptheimpaler• 9 years ago

But everyone tells me that's anecdotal

Most people have NO idea/sympathy for what its really like to have a disease/condition that medicine doesn't totally understand yet.. including doctors.

The bar for a certain treatment to be scientifically accepted is rightly pretty high - studies/research etc. that takes decades to do.

But as a patient, when medicine has no real treatments to offer you, of course our own bar should be lower! Even if sea salt hasn't been studied in a million people with double-blind placebo-controlled blah-blah studies, this kind of experiment has zero downside and potentially a very high upside - you would have to be crazy not to try it.

Anyways, just want to offer my sympathy and ranting as someone with a rare and ill-understood disease. Tim Ferriss and the whole "bio-hacking" movement also have this idea of "you are an N of 1" - we don't need permission to do basic experiments on ourselves. And for many millions of people for whom medicine has no answers, this really is the best we have.

Please keep talking about what works and what doesn't work for you regardless of haters - anecdotes can help others and the right anecdotes will someday become experiments, which will one day become well-accepted "science". Maybe in a 100 years medicine will recommend sea salt for CF, it will be just as effective then as it is now, and all that will have changed is it will have the "REAL SCIENCE TM" stamp of approval.

rhodysurf2• 9 years ago

Yea same. Anecdotal but my surfer friends and I are seemingly never sick but other people I interact with are sick more often.

tim333• 9 years ago

It seems possible that exposure to bacteria in the water in small doses builds the bodies immune system to deal with those making subsequent problems less likely.

computator• 9 years ago

The healthy effects of the exercising on the sea must counteract the bacteria, because I don't know a healthier group than the surfing community around here.

You're making a conclusion about cause and effect. It might be the case that the majority of people who take up surfing are extremely healthy since it's a physically demanding sport.

npunt• 9 years ago

Exactly, the only people who’d continue surfing would be the ones whose immune systems could cope with the shock. If you kept getting sick after surfing you’d probably quit pretty quickly.

bufferoverflow2• 9 years ago

It's not that physically demanding. I've seen 3-4 year olds in Hawaii do it. Like in any sport, it depends on how far you want to push yourself.

usaphp• 9 years ago

because I don't know a healthier group than the surfing community around here

Most of the serfers I know are just generally active people, they were like it long before becoming serfers, most did not become healthy because they are serfers, instead they become serfers because they like active healthy lifestyle.

teekert• 9 years ago

https://www.powerthesaurus.org/serfers ?

lawlessone• 9 years ago

They're physically fit, but if those resistant bacteria end up in a part of their body other than their gut it will be a lot harder to remove. They could be more likely to die in those cases.

tome2• 9 years ago

Surely people who do the same amount of exercise as surfers but in the absence of harmful bacteria are even better off?

Angostura• 9 years ago

The ones who get really sick silently disappear from the surfing community.

sean2• 9 years ago

Counterpoint: here in Hawaii, my friends and coworkers who surf are some of the most frequently bacteria infested people: frequent nose and ear infections, plus occasional staff infections.

These infections are usually confirmed by doctors for the people in their 50s or older, but us younger people are frequently under the weather from what I might now guess is bacterial infections.

Retra• 9 years ago

*staph infection

aresant• 9 years ago

No coastal surf break that's close to civilization is safe from bacteria infestation but it is manageable.

BUT sewage regulation can go a long, long way - take a look at the San Diego bacteria report http://www.sdbeachinfo.com - the regularly sampled coastal water is in general pretty good even though there was rain in SoCal last week.

Meanwhile less than 30 miles away the surf breaks next to Tijuana, Mexico are extremely high bacteria - that's about par for the course - really sad to see:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-t...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEyeCm0GVKg

rcpt• 9 years ago

That sewage is gross but the waves that break right near the outflow look ass kicking https://youtu.be/gcMqr_vbInI

el_benhameen• 9 years ago

Imperial Beach is supposed to have one of the best beach breaks in San Diego county besides Black’s, but even the mayor got sick from surfing it. Major bummer.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-t...

intrasight• 9 years ago

Then I had better stop surfing Hacker News ;)

jasonkester2• 9 years ago

Totally worth it.

Just your periodic reminder that Surfing is one of the most fun things that a person can do on this planet, as evidenced by the fact that so many people have essentially dropped out of society and dedicated their lives to doing it every day.

If you live in a place near the water such as, say, the San Francisco Bay Area, and you have never tried surfing, you owe it to yourself to head down to Santa Cruz this weekend and give it a try.

Minor warning, though, you'll likely end up wearing your own personal groove into that highway over the next several years as you find excuses to sneak in a quick one every single morning once you get hooked.

malikNF• 9 years ago

>as evidenced by the fact that so many people have essentially dropped out of society and dedicated their lives to doing it every day.

Sorry what? I hear people who do hard drugs that ruin their lives do the same thing. You know, drop out of society and dedicate their entire life doing it.

Lewton• 9 years ago

Drugs are also some of the most fun things that a person can do on this planet

jasonkester2• 9 years ago

Remember that terrible career advice they used to give saying "do what you love"?

Well, I always interpreted that as "arrange your life so that you can do what you love as often as possible", so I program computers for a living. It has the perfect combination of paying you four times as much as anything else for each hour you put in, and letting you hop from short term gig to short term gig. That gives you lots of free time that you can spend doing what you love.

Including, for instance, dedicating your life to climbing rocks and surfing.

I'm sure you could also dedicate your life to sitting in your mom's basement or on the beach in Belize smoking weed, for much less. But that's not what we're discussing here.

The reason I mentioned Surfing above is that, until you try it, you might not realize that you want to re-structure your lifestyle to prioritize it over, say, contriving to lease the flashiest car your bank will give you credit for. Most people are doing that second thing most of the time. And lots of them could benefit from a bit of real fun in their lives.

Scea91• 9 years ago

Tried surfing last summer when I was at Bali. It was one of the best experiences of my life. In the next few days I also started scuba diving which I like even more.

It's a shame I currently live in a landlocked country.

carlmr2• 9 years ago

If instead you're near the mountains you can get into climbing (or even if you have a climbing gym nearby). Also highly addictive.

Maarten88• 9 years ago

Climbing is a different type of addiction. In the mountains, I'd think that paragliding or snowboarding are better alternatives to surfing.

jlebrech2• 9 years ago

some even go on heists to fund their surfing habit, I saw a documentary about it once.

ndstephens• 9 years ago

Point Break was a documentary?? I'll be damned...

fiftyacorn• 9 years ago

I bet open water swimmers have more - i remember doing open water and you always took a few mouthfuls of water by mistake during swims

blablabla123• 9 years ago

I wonder how many of them cook for themselves and buy only organic meat.

mseebach• 9 years ago

I couldn't really figure this out from the article: What's the link between antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and manure run-off/sewage? It's obvious that there'd be more bacteria, but what's the deal specifically with them being antibiotic-resistant?

object505• 9 years ago

Probably something to do with the fact that cattle are given loads of antibiotics, and are therefore more likely to host resistant bacteria.

ivanhoe• 9 years ago

Antibiotics are heavily abused to help the survival of farm animals that are kept in really bad conditions. One horror story from big farms around here where I live is that in summer they spray cows with water to cool them in overcrowded boxes that they're kept in. But problem is that those cows are then left all wet and will often catch a cold and develop a pneumonia if untreated, so farmers give them antibiotics regularly to prevent this. I know this for cattle farms first-hand, but I've heard that pig farms are even worse offenders.

jessriedel• 9 years ago

My understanding is that the primary use of antibiotics in farm animals is for more rapid animal growth, not to prevent visible symptoms of infection. (It's not clear why antibiotics promote growth, but it's possible they are suppressing minor asymptomatic infections that sap calories.)

In any case, the article is slightly misleading since the overlap between important human antibiotics and the widely used animal antibiotics is modest.

http://animalantibiotics.org/antibiotics-used-farm-animals/

autokad• 9 years ago

a lot of people are going to blindly say 'antibiotics used on animals'. that's probably not the case. the ocean has a high salinity as we all know. The same mechanisms that bacteria evolve to deal with that make it ideal for fighting against antibiotics.

therealdrag0• 9 years ago

I was wondering "isn't the salt water anti-biotic?"

chiefalchemist• 9 years ago

If the surfers are swallowing that much water why aren't more of them carries? Is it possible some of them for some reason have a natural "immunity"?

Also, it's at least possible (in theory) it's not the water at all. What if, just an example, many of them have the same weed dealer? Perhaps not the ideal example. But life is complex and surfing might not be THE common tread for this situation.

Or what if they ate ice cream? (Note: I know the difference between bacteria and virus. The link is simply to suggest the possibility of some other "trigger.")

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-curious-case-of-...

66d8kk• 9 years ago

I always remember when I first started surfing at the age of 10 in the North Sea. I was always sick and off from school with stomach bugs.

My anecdote is hardly scientific proof but this article certainly supports my thinking that I've now got a stronger stomach than most due to surfing at such a young age in terrible water conditions.

Over a period of a few years it just stopped and I was never ill again (after a surf)...apart from the dreaded and incredibly painful ear infections.

jlg23• 9 years ago

Anybody checked the original study? Having a group that fights against sewage pollution in the interest of surfers recruit the surfers sounds.. sketchy at least.

Surfers three times more likely to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria in guts

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