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Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Persistent Bacteria Go Down

Posted by samzenpus on from the catching-more-bugs-with-sugar dept.

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."

13 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Let me be the first to say it... by Rie+Beam · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

    1. Re:Let me be the first to say it... by TheLink · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just wondering how long it would take for the bacteria to become resistant to this technique.

      Is there a reason why it would remain hard for the bacteria to stay dormant in the presence of antibiotics as long as there is sugar around?

      Might be trivial enough for the bacteria to evolve around this by next month ;).

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    2. Re:Let me be the first to say it... by jittles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All I have to say is this: It looks like Mary Poppins was right.

    3. Re:Let me be the first to say it... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is there a reason why it would remain hard for the bacteria to stay dormant in the presence of antibiotics as long as there is sugar around?

      Yes. Bacteria are simple. Feed in presence of food, dormant in absence of food is simple behaviour that can be trivially implemented using some chemical signals. Feed in presence of food and absence of antibiotic, dormant in presence of antibiotic is harder. You have to process two signals, do some weighting, and then select the correct behaviour.

      You also need to think about the intermediate steps. A bacterium on the way to evolving this behaviour would almost certainly not get it right first time. If it doesn't feed in the presence of sugar and the presence of non-fatal doses of antibiotics (or the absence of antibiotics), then it will be selected against in favour of ones that do. If it does feed in the presence of antibiotics, then it will die.

      Remember, evolution is only good at selecting local maxima, not global maxima, and the path to this involves jumping from one local maximum to another. If someone were intelligently designing bacteria, then it would be a lot easier...

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  2. Discovered? by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Discovered? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Discovered? by woolpert · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  3. Re:time to stop the black coffee. by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

  4. Re:Sugar is going to cost $1000 per pound by icebraining · · Score: 4, Informative

    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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  5. Re:Sing it together! by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apparently, it also helps the poison go down...

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  6. Re:xylitol might be even better by secondhand_Buddah · · Score: 4, Informative

    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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  7. The aminoglycoside is the *antibiotic* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

  8. Not quite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.