Chemical Additive to Antibiotics Could Make Them Newly Effective Against Resistant Bacteria

By Clay Dillow Posted 09.11.2009 at 9:54 am 10 Comments

Bacterial Defense Many bacteria, like this staphylococcus, have developed resistance to antibiotics over time, but new chemical additive could strip bacteria of their defenses, making old drugs effective once again. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem, not to mention an economic drain, for doctors and pharmaceutical makers trying to fight bacterial infections. Many antibiotics in our arsenal are becoming practically useless, as bacteria breed resistance to them. But researchers at Texas Tech University and Baylor University have developed a chemical additive that could make old drugs useful again.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a byproduct of natural selection. Antibiotics like penicillins and cephalosporins are generally effective in destroying many common bacteria. But some bacteria have developed an ability to produce an enzyme, known as metallo-beta-lactamase, that renders those common antibiotics ineffective. With overuse and misuse of antibiotics over the past half-decade, the non-metallo-beta-lactamase bacteria have been killed off and the resistant bacteria have been left to reproduce, making them the dominant strain over time.

But the researchers in Texas have developed a chain of nucleic acids, called an aptamer, that stops metallo-beta-lactamase enzymes from breaking down antibiotics. Aptamers themselves are not new, but these particular aptamers bind to the enzymes, rendering the bacteria's defenses impotent. As a result, even older antibiotics, in conjunction with the right aptamers, should be able to destroy bacteria that previously were resistant.

Pre-clinical trials on the aptamers are already getting underway. If successful, the use of aptamers alongside standard classic antibiotics could rejuvenate efforts to destroy infectious bacteria in places where it's been either impossible or far too expensive before.

[PhysOrg]

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10 Comments

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Timemachine

09/11/09 at 12:32 pm

Hopefully this will work as advertized and lives will be saved but it still doesn't relieve the fear of going to the hospital where most of these antibiotic resistance strains live.

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extremechiton

09/11/09 at 6:27 pm

maybe this can be used in the swine flu vaccine.

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briang1621

09/12/09 at 11:38 am

Sorry virus and bacterial infections are two totally different things, this will not work on any virus including swine flu.

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briang1621

09/12/09 at 11:47 am

I see this as being a new field, re-engineered antibiotics. This has the potential to fight many horribly resistance bacterial, lets hope that the additional chemicals do not cause any additional reactions, and make it through the FDA trials.
Dr. Brian Glassman
Ph.D in Innovation Management from Purdue University.

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cnrhyan

09/12/09 at 9:07 pm

Unfortunately this is likely only a temporary fix. Bacteria and Evolution have proved to be extremely to thwart in this sense. Hopefully, it will buy us time to come up with the next solution after bacteria evolve to become resistant from the latest treatment.

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TechnoFreakFace

09/13/09 at 10:57 am

no silver-bullet solution here, thats the wonder of evolution even if it causes such deadly diseases

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William-sudo

09/14/09 at 12:52 am

I would think that interference with quorum sensing would be better for stopping resistance that this band-aid solution.

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William-sudo

09/14/09 at 12:53 am

I would think that interference with quorum sensing would be better for stopping resistance that this band-aid solution.

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mystixa

09/14/09 at 8:14 pm

nice.. its a never ending loop, taht requires us to continue research into basic microbiology. We know that evolution exists yet our medical pracice until now has treated diseases like they were all static.

To answer this they went from 'overprescribing' to underprescribing antibiotics instead of just doing the basic research to fix them. Its nice to see us making up for some of that.

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TwistedAestivus

09/30/09 at 10:45 pm

greaaaat! so now we can save all the people who wouldve died of the diseases, and then wouldnt have had kids also susceptible to it. natural selection at its most retarded. no wonder the earth is overpopulated.....
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