Existing Drugs Fight Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs 110
sciencehabit writes "Medical experts have been powerless to stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and are increasingly desperate to develop novel drugs. But a new study finds that smarter use of current antibiotics could offer a solution. Researchers were able to keep resistant bacteria from thriving by alternating antibiotics to specifically exploit the vulnerabilities that come along with resistance—a strategy that could extend the lifespan of existing drugs to continue fighting even the most persistent pathogens."
Re:Another strategy (Score:5, Informative)
If only "pharma can't be bothered to create new antibiotics" were the issue. As it stands antibiotic development is a very active, very well funded private and public research effort. (As you'd expect from a field where whoever gets there first becomes unspeakably wealthy, there are an awful lot of startups.) It's just not turning up anything.
Re:The bacteria are like the Borg. (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, it's even messier than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOS_response [wikipedia.org]
This is the phenomenon the researchers are exploiting. Not every antibiotic resistance comes from a neatly-packed, horizontally-transferable gene; often, the bacterium is instead evolving alternatives to perform common tasks like the binding of ribosome cofactors. The most transferable antibiotic resistance genes are often enzymes that degrades the antibiotic. These can be overwhelmed; just hit the bacteria with several drugs at the same time. HGT of new-and-improved constitutive genes certainly still happens, but it's much less common, and may not be compatible across species. (As an extreme example, we only recently started finding cases where the ribosomal 16S gene was transferred, and both instances were within the same genus.)
So... there are definitely some strains, like MRSA [wikipedia.org], that have evolved to be ruthless killing machines, and these are particularly dangerous because their DNA can be taken up by other bacteria, but at present they represent a small percentage of all potential hospital-borne pathogens. They kill a lot (MRSA is believed to be the fourth largest cause of death in the US and kills over a hundred thousand people a year), but because the resistance comes from all of these key constitutive genes that have co-evolved, they mostly stay put. This is why a lot of research now focuses on preventing biofilm formation.