Huge news – new antibiotic found
Antibiotics kill bacteria and they have been the medical lifesaver since being first discovered. Many millions of people owe their lives to these drugs, however we are now facing a major crisis.
Many bacteria have over time built up immunity to these life saving chemicals. This means that our magic silver bullet is no longer the guaranteed lifesaver that it was.
The reason is simple, we have just over used this amazing gift.
We routinely add antibiotics to the feed of our livestock to reduce deaths in the herd / flock and increase profit. This means that bacteria have massive and ongoing exposure to the drugs and so have time to build up the immunity that now causes us a significant problem. At least 50 percent of all antibiotics used on earth are used in animal / chicken feed.
Some food poisoning bacteria are now also immune to antibiotics, like some Salmonella, so it is not just diseases that we can no longer fight but food poisoning. These are the so called ”superbugs” and the classic food and human related example is Golden Staph or as the antibiotic resistant version is known – Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). This is now present in nearly all places where humans can be ill and congregate, like hospitals, childcare centres and aged care centres.
So what do we do?
Scientists across the world have been frantically working on finding alternatives to these antibiotics for some time, with varying degrees of success.
One of these groups of scientists at Northeastern University in Boston has just discovered the first new antibiotic for 30 years and it shows no sign of having any drug resistance.
It may well be the thing we need to help us through this crisis.
It targets the fatty molecules in the cell walls of many bacteria, including MRSA, and this seems to make it less likely to cause immunity issues like other antibiotics.
Teixobactin was isolated from soil bacteria in a special new technique and is likely to be available for use within five years.
It is huge news and there may now be light at the end of a very scary tunnel.
Professor Kim Lewis, who led the Northeastern team, said; “No resistance normally means that we discovered a new detergent, which is a molecule that will destroy the membrane of the bacterial cell but also will destroy the membranes of our cells, so these are toxic compounds. That was my first reaction; that we found another boring molecule. But then in parallel we tested that compound against mammalian cells, and found it was not toxic against mammalian cells. So we have something very intriguing. Here is a new molecule that hits bacterial cells, does not hit mammalian cells, and there’s no resistance … That was unique and very exciting.”
However, it does not work on the group of bacteria which are gram negative, as these have a type of shield around their cells which prevents this new antibiotic access. E.coli is unfortunately a member of this group and as there is now one type at least with antibiotic resistance, and it is the cause of the largest food poisoning in world history, there are still major causes for big concern.
The good news is that the technique this team have used, involves actually growing possible antibiotic producing bacteria in soil with the lab and this allows developments which have not happened previously. This means that there may well be an antibiotic that can be found using this technique which will work on the gram negative bacteria.
Although this development may be the solution we need, it does not mean that all other work in searching for a solution to our antibiotic resistant crisis can stop. We need more than one new silver bullet, and so the work in labs around the world continues.
Written by Rachelle Williams, The Green Food Safety Coach.