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Possible Antibiotic for MRSA Superbug
darkmeridian writes "Merck has discovered a possible treatment for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a virulent superbug resistant to many current antibiotics. The new compound, platensimycin, was found in a sample of South African soil and works by preventing the bacteria from assembling fatty acids into its cell membrane. This mechanism of action is novel among antibiotics, most of which currently block DNA assembly or protein assembly. Of course, this product still has to undergo human testing, but apparently looks promising."
Viagara was an accident. They were testing phosphodiesterase inhibitors as a therapy for keeping heart vessels open. It didn't work so well, but they discovered the unexpected side effect of opening vessels in the penis when the subjects were reluctant to return their unused pills.
I used to work in a residential facility for disabled children with severe/profound mental retardation, and those who had the hardest time were the ones that contracted MRSA. Because these kids had such significant physical problems, they were often in and out of hospitals and would contract the virus while admitted there. Besides the scary fact that this bug is prevalent in hospitals of all places, it is so dangerous and contageous to children that those who contract it have to be kept in isolation.
Every day I would walk by the isolation ward and look in, just to let the kids know that someone was concerned for them. These children already had the odds stacked against them, and to top it off with the fact those who attended to them had to avoid all physical contact cut me to the heart. How sad is it to be a kid who can never be hugged, having to live without anyone touching them?
If someone can isolate and develop an antibiotic that can cure MRSA, I'll be one of the first in line to shake their hand.
Get over yourself.
After learning about this fruit and its many documented benefits, I bought into the company that brought it to the market in the US.
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There's "bacteriophage therapy" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage_therapy ) which really works (it was successfully used BEFORE the invention of antibiotics) and doesn't produce resistant bacteria.
Sadly, there's almost no research on this topic.
Among these measures is to target virulence rather than the pathogen itself. The reason is that a species of pathogen can have varying virulence and you want the last virulent to win the competition for the ecological niche (human body). Ewald gives an example of a particular protein used by a bacteria to convert human lung tissue to useful food -- a protein that costs the bacteria about 5% of its budget but has huge returns. Vaccinating against this protein can let the more benign variants beat out the virulent variants for the lungs of humans, and give the human immune system the kick it needs to construct antibodies to suppress further infection.
Seastead this.
So until we start seeing much more significant resistance to antibiotics they're not likely to be cost effective.
I beg to differ. Many families of antibiotics share the same core mode of action, with only a few side-chains different. E.g. the original Penicillin and modern Methicillin are both beta-lactam antibiotics, which attack bacterial cell walls (more specifically, the enzyme that assembles them). Penicillin resistance is due to the bacteria producing a new enzyme (beta-lactamase) which safely inactivates the antibiotic. Current Methicillin resistance has developed gradually, as each new variant of Penicillin is introduced, the enzyme mutates to accomodate it.
If two antibiotics are similar enough, resistance developed against one can confer resistance against the other. Agricultural use of Avoparcin is widely believed to have led to the development of Vancomycin Resistant Enterrococcus (VRE),
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It is interesting how most of the antibiotics -- this new one and including the first one -- penicillin, are sythesized and produced by fungi. There is a constant battle for nutrition and space between the bacteria and the fungi -- some kind of an evolutionary yin and yang. One will always try to overtake the other and will develop new mechanisms for resistance or attack.
I would not bet on that.
Most Staph strains with antibiotic immunity gain it from a phague infection. While bacteriophagues are very large and complex there is not that much spare room for carry an extra resistance gene on top of what they drag around at the moment. It will most likely have to lose either the penicillin resistance gene or the tissue necrosis toxin gene to accommodate an extra antibiotic group resistance.
In the first case it can be smacked on the head using conventional penicillin derivatives.
In the second case the normal immunity mechanisms will take care of it. By the way, it is the necrosis toxins produced by MRSA which make it so dangerous, not the antibiotic resistance as such. They kill tissue around the infected zone before it actually gets infected creating the environment in which staph can trhive. In addition to that none of the immune system cells can traverse this dead zone and get to the staph either.
This is all IIRC of course, as it has been very long time since I have done something with mol biol and microbiol.
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Now I'm at home taking a antobiotic called cefazolin every 8 hours until the remainder of the infection clears up. But now I get to spend all day reading Slashdot. I guess somepeople would give their right foot to be able to do that. ;-)
Hey, what do you expect me to do, cry about it? Just keeping my spirits up.