Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Step Forward In Antibiotic Tech May Spare Healthy Microbes

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Step Forward In Antibiotic Tech May Spare Healthy Microbes

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Antibiotics are very powerful tools to help save lives, but it still does have its flaws like sometimes working way too well that it could not tell the difference when fighting off good or bad bacteria, like killing off healthy bacteria in the gut that could stave off diseases in the process of battling the bad ones.

These helpful bacteria is known as the microbiome and thrives in the gut to help the body absorb nutrients and minerals from food among others, but are at risk of getting damaged that could cause a variety of health conditions, including one that could make people really sick from a debilitating diarrheal condition that is difficult to treat.

A research team from the St. Jude Children’s research hospital is currently working on an antibiotic to kill bad microbes, and may prevent helpful bacteria and the microbiome from being affected during the process of treating diseases with antibiotics.

Researchers claimed that their study is focused on developing an antibiotic drug that could target only the harmful ones and leaving the microbiome alone and are currently testing an experimental drug called the Debio 1452 that targets bacteria responsible for staph infections. The study was recently published in the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy online magazine,

Staph bacteria holds one of the most dangerous bacteria strain called the staphylococcus aureus or the MRSA, which has been known to be resistant to methicillin.

Researchers argue that antibiotics were historically developed to kill bacteria, but with current scientific breakthroughs and advances in technology, they may be able to develop one that may be smart enough to tell which ones it needs to like and which ones need to be left alone.

They claim that this antibiotic targets a protein called FabI which common to all types of staph bacteria but is not commonly found in other bacteria types. As FabI is attacked by the Debio 1452, it compromises the structure of the bacterial cell.

The Debio 1452 was tested on lab mice that were treated along with other commonly-used antibiotics such as amoxicillin and clindamycin. The microbioms of those mice that received the test antibiotic were relatively stable, while those treated with other antibiotics significantly dropped.

After the test ceased the antibiotics in the mice, their microbiome levels returned to normal and after a couple of days, those that were given Debio 1452 recovered completely.

Experts believe that this is a tremendous breakthrough in the field of medicine and expressed hopes that this could further lead the way in developing more antibiotic treatments for a bevy of other types of bacteria that are damaging to health.

It may be a long way to go before this type of process is done for all bacteria types, but this is certainly a great step that could lead to future discoveries and disease prevention research.

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from NUTRITION CLUB CANADA http://nutritionclub.ca/antibiotic-bad-microbes/amp/