Cancelling the apocalypse
Calamity, or the threat of it, often breeds innovation; this is the case with the fight against the microbial scourge. The most intuitive strategy to counter a failing drug repertoire is to search for new drugs that work.
In this aspect, researchers have once again sought Nature’s alliance. For example, scientists in Singapore have found that a purple tropical fruit in Southeast Asia, the mangosteen, produces a bactericidal compound called alpha-mangostin that is effective against Streptococcus aureus.
Another approach to incapacitate bacteria is by targeting their virulence factors, the tools by which bacteria invade the host, cause disease and evade host defenses. An Australia study has identified a common pattern in the bacteria’s virulence factors that is responsible for their maturation and export. While the targeting of virulence factors does not kill bacteria or stop their growth, it renders the bacteria impotent and more susceptible to host immune defenses.
Finally, like most battles during the medieval days, victory or defeat might be settled with clashes of metal. For bacteria, their Achilles heel is the metal, copper. Many studies have repeatedly shown that contact with copper wreaks havoc with bacteria cell membranes, causing death within minutes.
Hospitals around the world have begun fitting their surfaces with copper and its alloys. Chiyoda Hospital on Japan’s Kyushu island is the world’s first new hospital to be entirely fitted with brass door handles and rail bars. In Australia, the Sandringham Hospital has also elected to install copper-alloy door furniture and grab poles. Antimicrobial copper has even been incorporated into medical devices, with a Taiwanese company launching a stethoscope consisting of ear tubes and a chest piece made from copper.
A community effort against antibiotic resistance
These novel strategies are only the tip of the iceberg in an ever-growing arsenal of new antimicrobials. However, the old adage ‘prevention is better than cure’ still holds true today, and stopping the proliferation of resistant bacteria strains cannot be left to science alone. Correct prescription of antibiotics, regulation against the misuse of antibiotics in farming and proper treatment of hospital wastewater are but a handful of ways that governments and societies can ensure that microbes do not gain the upper hand on us.
The implementation of these efforts is perhaps most urgent in India, the world’s largest consumer of antibiotics (followed closely by China and the US). Economic progress over the past decade in India has enabled more of its citizens to afford antibiotics, but because antibiotics are sold as over-the counter prescriptions, they are often inappropriately dispensed. Already, more than one in three clinical presentations of staphylococcus aureus infection in India involve methicillin-resistant strains, and E. coli strains resistant to common first-line antibiotics such as ampicillin occur at rates between 50 to 75 percent.
The Golden Age of antibacterials may be over and the golden light may be fading, but in the words of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, recently articulated in the movie Interstellar: “Do not go gentle into that good night… Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
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