Fighting MRSA with new membrane-busting compound

ACS: Public health officials are increasingly concerned over methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The bacteria have developed resistance to a number of treatments, even antibiotics of last resort in some cases. Now researchers report in ACS’ journal Bioconjugate Chemistry that a new class of compounds can treat MRSA skin infections in mice with no signs of acute toxicity, and no signs that the bacteria would develop resistance to them after many applications.

Antibiotic Effective Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria in Pediatric Skin Infections

UCSD: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterial scourge. As its name suggests, MRSA is resistant to most common antibiotics and thus difficult to treat, particularly in children where it commonly causes complicated skin and skin structure infections. In a randomized, controlled clinical trial — the first of its kind — a multi-institution research team reports that daptomycin, part of a new class of antibiotics currently approved only for use in adults, is effective and well-tolerated in children. The findings are published in the March 2017 issue of Pediatrics.

Woman dies from infection resistant to all antibiotics available in the US

London: A woman from the USA has died of infection from a strain of Klebsiella pneumonia that was resistant to all 26 available antibiotics in the United States, as reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The woman returned to the state of Nevada in August with an infection in her hip, following an extended period in India. It is believed she picked up the multi-resistant strain through a wound infecting her bone and hip, whilst in India where she was previously hospitalised for a broken leg. Typically found in the gut, K. pneumoniae does not usually cause harm, but in this case the bone infection caused severe inflammation, which ultimately caused the woman to die from septic shock. Doctors found that none of the 26 antibiotics available in the US were able to treat the infection, including carbapenems and colistin, often referred to as the ‘drugs of last resort.’

Research on new, rapid screening test identifies potential therapies against drug-resistant bacteria

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Clinical Center and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have created a new way to identify drugs and drug combinations that may potentially be useful in combating infections that are resistant to many different antibiotics. They developed an assay (test) to rapidly screen thousands of drugs to determine how effective they were against a variety of types of resistant bacteria.
The screening method provides a potential new approach to repurpose known drugs and compounds to potentially help deal with powerful, hospital-borne infections, as well as emerging infectious diseases.
NCATS scientist Wei Zheng, Ph.D., and NIH colleagues Peter Williamson, M.D., Ph.D., of NIAID, and Karen Frank, M.D., Ph.D. of the Clinical Center, used the test to screen approximately 4,000 approved drugs and other biologically active compounds, identifying 25 that suppressed the growth of two drug-resistant strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae that have become resistant to most major types of antibiotics. Drug-resistant Klebsiella has been a source of fatal infections in many hospitals across the country.
The researchers also used the screening test to gauge the effectiveness of combinations of drugs against antibiotic-resistant bacteria in this study. They found three different three-drug combinations that were effective against 10 common strains of multi-drug-resistant bacteria.
The results were published Nov. 9, 2016, in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections (link is external).

NIH: The new screening test applies high-throughput screening technology to examine thousands of drugs and compounds that inhibit bacterial growth. The 25 newly identified drugs and compounds consisted of 11 U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, and 14 drugs still under investigation. They include antibiotics, antifungals, antiseptics, and an antiviral, antimalarial and anticancer drug/compound. “The results are very promising, and we think that the test can eventually help repurpose approved drugs and other compounds and find clinically relevant drug combinations that can be approved for to use in different ways that we have never used before,” Zheng said. “We’re hoping this approach will lead to approvable, effective ways to combat dangerous infections by drug-resistant bacteria.”

Restricting antibiotics could help superbugs

Scimex: Israeli scientists have used a mathematical model and electronic medical records data to show that restricting the use of certain antibiotics, in order to stop the spread of resistant pathogens, may actually lead to the opposite situation. The researchers found that the advantages of deliberately using restricted antibiotics can sometimes outweigh the disadvantages, and lead to fewer instances of bacterial resistance to all available drugs in the long term.

Researchers develop a new means of killing harmful bacteria

MIT: Researchers at MIT have proven that the brain’s cortex doesn’t process specific tasks in highly specialized modules — showing that the cortex is, in fact, quite dynamic when sharing information. Previous studies of the brain have depicted the cortex as a patchwork of function-specific regions. Parts of the visual cortex at the back of the brain, for instance, encode color and motion, while specific frontal and middle regions control more complex functions, such as decision-making. Neuroscientists have long criticized this view as too compartmentalized.

Scientists map superbug genome paving way for new treatments and prevention

Melbourne: An international team of scientists, led by the University of Melbourne, has decoded the genes of Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP), a bacterium found in hospitals throughout the developing and developed world. A paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences involved 37 research institutions around the world and bacterial samples from six countries, representing 300 strains.

The study is the largest ever genetically-decoded collection of this bacterial pathogen and gives scientists access to valuable data to stay ahead of KP evolution, as fears grow about the emergence of strains that are both highly infectious and antibiotic-resistant.   

What is KPC and should I be worried about these superbugs?

TheConversation: Superbugs are back in the news – and everybody loves a good germ panic story. The bugs raising alarm are called KPC (Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase) or CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae). The Enterobacteriaceae are a large family of bacteria, which largely live as a normal part of people’s healthy gut bacteria. It includes E. coli as well as some more nasty bugs such as Salmonella and Shigella, which cause gastroenteritis.

Common Antibiotic Azithromycin May Be the Answer to Many Multidrug-Resistant Bacterial Infections

UCSD: Long ignored as a treatment option for certain serious bacterial infections, azithromycin proves strikingly effective in new lab and animal tests.Contrary to current medical dogma, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences report that the common antibiotic azithromycin kills many multidrug-resistant bacteria very effectively — when tested under conditions that closely resemble the human body and its natural antimicrobial factors. The researchers believe the finding, published June 10 by EBioMedicine, could prompt an immediate review of the current standard of care for patients with certain so-called “superbug” infections.

New system to detect patients’ antibiotic resistance to take just 30 mins

London: A new device being developed by medical experts will transform the time it takes to detect antibiotic resistance in patients from several days to just half an hour. The development will allow doctors to effectively treat patients with infections known to have high levels of antibiotic drug resistance, which has been described as one of the greatest health threats to human health. Antibiotic resistance is a huge challenge to current medical practices, which rely heavily on the use of antibiotics. Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics in a number of ways through mutations of their own genes or by “ingesting” new resistant genes.

Finding new ways to save lives by killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Otago: Antimicrobial resistance is recognised by Governments and international medical bodies as a serious threat to health and lives. Dire scenarios predict that within the next decade people will die from infections we now treat simply with antibiotics. Professor Kettle says the overuse of antibiotics, particularly general ones that target many types of bacteria, has allowed a wide range of bugs to develop resistance, and render many common antibiotics useless. One of the ways our body fights infection is through the action of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell. Neutrophils hunt out and kill pathogenic bacteria. However, in some cases -not yet well understood by scientists - fatal infections occur when neutrophils are overwhelmed or bacteria evade them. In these situations, more neutrophils rush to the site of infection and damage healthy tissue rather than killing the bacteria.

New chip makes testing for antibiotic-resistant bacteria faster, easier

Toronto: It’s a device that could transform a doctor’s ability to treat infections: a test for antibiotic resistance that works in just one hour – instead of several days. We live in fear of ‘superbugs’: infectious bacteria that don’t respond to treatment by antibiotics, and can turn a routine hospital stay into a nightmare. A 2015 Health Canada report estimates that superbugs have already cost Canadians $1 billion, and are a “serious and growing issue.” Each year two million people in the U.S. contract antibiotic-resistant infections, and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result. But tests for antibiotic resistance can take up to three days to come back from the lab, hindering doctors’ ability to treat bacterial infections quickly.

Virus vs. superbug! FIGHT!

Scimex: Israeli scientists have used a virus that infects bacteria to insert genes that make the bugs more susceptible to antibiotics. The researchers say the virus could be used to tackle antibiotic resistant superbugs that live in our hospitals. A proof-of-concept study suggests that phage therapy might offer an approach to address the long-intractable problem of antibiotic resistance. Phage therapy, predicated on tailored viruses that target pathogenic bacteria, could help counter the surge of antibiotic resistance, but the strategy suffers from shortfalls, not least of which are the difficulty of delivering phages into infected tissues and the frequent transfer of phage-resistance genes between bacteria.

Deadly superbugs cross borders

Queensland: Dangerous superbug clones have successfully spread beyond the borders of the Middle East Gulf States, University of Queensland researchers have found. The superbug Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacteria well known for being antibiotic-resistant and associated with dangerous hospital-acquired infections and subsequent outbreaks, has been found in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. The University of Queensland lead the first region-wide collaborative study on superbugs (antibiotic-resistant bacteria) in the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Multidrug-resistant Shigellosis Spreading in the United States

CDC: International travelers are bringing a multidrug-resistant intestinal illness to the United States and spreading it to others who have not traveled, according to a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Shigella sonnei bacteria resistant to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin sickened 243 people in 32 states and Puerto Rico between May 2014 and February 2015. Research by the CDC found that the drug-resistant illness was being repeatedly introduced as ill travelers returned and was then infecting other people in a series of outbreaks around the country.

Herbicides can cause bacteria to become resistant

Canterbury: Research lead by a team from the University of Canterbury has found that commonly used herbicides can cause bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics. Herbicides are used to kill plants. They can be tested for killing bacteria, too, as part of the process of reviewing their approval for use. However, they have never been tested for other effects on bacteria.

European collaboration to tackle antibiotic resistance

Liverpool University. UK: The University of Liverpool and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital are part of a large European and pharmaceutical partnership to develop new antibiotic treatments. The Combatting Bacterial Resistance in Europe – Molecules Against Gram-Negative Infections (COMBACTE-MAGNET), project is part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), bringing together 33 European academic partners and five pharmaceuticals in research activities to prevent and treat infections that have become resistant to antibiotics.

New insight into antibiotic resistance strengthens call for increased focus on research

Birmingham University. UK: A team of scientists led by the University of Birmingham have identified a new mechanism of antibiotic resistance in bacterial cells which could help us in understanding, and developing solutions to, the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.