Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm taking this with a grain of salt.
Yes, but we've yet to develop nano-sized shotguns, so that'll have to wait.
Discovered? No, we've known this and used this for years. It's a typical procedure to treat difficult wounds that are failing to close by 2nd or 3rd intention with sugar or honey. We also grind up fenitoin pills (used to treat epileptics) and add them to the wound, since fenitoin stimulates fibroblasts and helps with would healing. Of course this is not an FDA approved use of the drug, but it works.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If it was that simple then it would fail to account for the fact that diabetics (who go around with high blood sugar levels almost all the time) are more prone to all types of infection than non diabetics.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Xylitol is another form of sugar that in addition to low calories and insulin response, kills bacteria and the evil Helicobacter pylori that causes cavities and ulcers. Stay tuned for the 2027 study that will prove it effective!
...omphaloskepsis often...
How exactly can this technique be used to fight tuberculosis, which lives in the lungs? The sugar in the antibiotic would be absorbed into the blood stream before the antibiotic could get to the infection. Unless they're talking about inhaling the antibiotic with the sugar.. which I suppose is a possibility.
Maybe it's some kind of bonding process that bonds the sugar to the antibiotic? I suppose I could read the article if I was that curious.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I always thought n/t meant "no text", indicating the post itself was empty (which isn't possible with /.)
Could you please enlighten me?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
High blood sugar does not necessarily mean you ate a lot of sugar, in fact, the summary sounds like they are talking about white sugar. White sugar is far from the only sugar out there. The basic rule of thumb is: if the ingredient ends with "ose", it's a sugar (sucrose, dextrose, lactose, fructose, etc). Btw, I come from a family with a long history of Diabetes (both type 1 and 2).
The sugar and the antibiotic have to be present at the same time. Hitting the bacterium with sugar and then antibiotic will have the opposite effect - it will feed, divide, and then go dormant, so you'll end up with more bacteria, not less.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I can see it now. Drug companies will take their existing antibiotics, add a bit of sugar, and then upcharge $5 per fill for Sugarfukitol over normal Fukitol.
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.
Dilbert RSS feed
Considering that the standard placebo is a sugar pill, it's certainly something that should be investigated.
Apparently, it also helps the poison go down...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And in Soviet Russia, the TITLE is made in the joke!
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
No I won't!
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Can people please read the article before making inane comments, we are talking about aminoglycosides here not glucose, fructose or sucrose. This is a amino-modified sugar that are not absorbed in the gut. They have been around for a long time but until now they had not been used in conjunction with specific metabolites. So this has nothing to do with diabetics or blood sugar.
Well, they can't patent sugar itself - only this use at most (would Mary Poppins count as prior art?). However, it will need to be manufactured to GMP standards and the particular brand of sugar being administered would need to be shown to be bioequivalent to the sugar used in the trials. So, expect to pay a few bucks for your one-spoon measured dose.
Of course, that is only required if the company making the sugar wants to sell it with advertising that indicates that it is medically useful. I doubt anybody will go to this level of trouble. However, with litigation being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody comes out with such a brand and doctors all flock to it (nobody ever got sued for prescribing Niaspan(TM)).
What might be more likely is that somebody comes up with some kind of novel sugar analog that CAN be patented, and that would be expensive, but would likely have stronger clinical support (since with financial backing you can do more trials/etc).
We really need more publicly-funded clinical trials. Right now most trials have huge conflicts of interest, and they are only run on expensive products, since those are the only ones where somebody has the financial interest to pay the cost of an expensive trial.
So apparently a placebo (sugar pill) actually CAN have real effect!
If it was that simple then it would fail to account for the fact that diabetics (who go around with high blood sugar levels almost all the time) are more prone to all types of infection than non diabetics.
With diabetes one could have a triple blind study.
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?
Studies have pointed to the fact that many bacteria still "eat" the Xylitol -- they just can't digest it, and starve, or are otherwise impaired. Not a bad thing in these cases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037297 for one of many cromulent studies out there involving bacterial uptake of Xylitol.
It doesn't even need to be sugar really, just a simple carbohydrate. You could use vodka for the same effect, it's a somewhat popular, but controversial method of fighting algae in reef aquariums. Feed the bacteria so they outcompete the algae.
I've tried that before (on a split lip, after consulting with a doctor, who said, "might as well try"). It seemed to work, the doctor was surprised how fast it was healing. My understanding is it creates an environment which largely prevents bacterial growth.
Unfortunately I haven't gotten horribly injured lately, so I haven't been able to test it again. I am really looking forward to the next time I get a serious flesh wound so I can test that out.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you read the abstract, one of the ingredients they used was mannitol, which isn't strictly speaking a sugar at all - it's a sugar alcohol.