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."

Comments

Re:Discovered?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The aminoglycoside is the *antibiotic*

[Anonymous Coward]

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?