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Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Persistent Bacteria Go Down
Doctors have discovered that adding sugar to antibiotics increases their ability to knock out persistent staph infections (abstract). Certain types of bacteria called persisters shut down their metabolic processes when exposed to antibiotics. Adding sugar keeps the bacteria feeding, making them more susceptible to drugs. From the article: "Adding such a simple and widely available compound to existing antibiotics enhances their effectiveness against persisters, and fast. One test showed that a sugared up antibiotic could eliminate 99.9 percent of persisters in two hours, while a regular antibiotic did nothing. Doctors believe that this discovery will help treat urinary tract infections, staph infections, and strep throat, but its most life-saving application may be against the age-old disease tuberculosis. This infection of the lungs kills many people, and is hard to fight off. A little sugar could help save a lot of lives."
We use honey because it's antibiotic(kills bacteria) and it's contains sugar that just kill everything by osmotic pressure.
The part about bacteria keeping their metabolism going untill they die if you add sugar to the antibiotic is new.
I wouldn't mind that, then maybe they wouldn't put sugar in every freaking thing. In many places one can't even find yoghourt without added sugar.
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I was actually reading about this this morning. Sugars have 6 carbon atoms, while Xylitol has 5. Bacteria and yeasts only consume sugars that have 6 carbon atoms, so effectively Xylitol would not have the same effect.
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Diabetics have higher infection rates because they have worse circulation and lower-functioning immune systems. Neither of which have anything whatsoever to do with this discovery.
A bacterium on the way to evolving this behaviour would almost certainly not get it right first time.
You need to get a grasp of Carl Sagan's "Billions and Billions" when thinking about bacterial evolution.
The glucose is the metabolite and is used alongside an aminoglycoside antibiotic. It is aminoglycoside dependent because adding the sugar only works with aminoglycoside antibiotics: mannitol (the sugar) was tested with gentamicin (an aminoglycoside antibiotic), ofloxacin (a quinolone antibiotic) and ampicillin (a beta-lactam, specifically a penicillin antibiotic) and the only one which showed an improved response was the mannitol + gentamicin combination.
Glucose, mannitol and fructose then showed the greatest response with gentamicin (ribose, glycerol etc were much lower).
Have you read the article?