Three novel treatments for bacterial diseases show high bactericidal effects, giving hope to a future without antibiotics.
As antibiotic resistance continues to threaten global health, and with
the progress of antibiotic discovery having slowed down dramatically in
recent years, the demand for alternative methods of treating the
ever-growing list of bacterial diseases has become increasingly urgent.
In a paper published in Biorxiv in the last quarter of 2015, Kim
& Gaitas [1] explore three novel methods
of eliminating Staphylococcus aureus from blood in vitro. These involve
capturing pathogens using an antibody-coated tube, killing pathogens
using near infrared light, and killing pathogens using ultraviolet
light. The authors investigate the viability of these antibiotic-free
techniques as options for the treatment of S. aureus infections and
address limitations and future research to improve and expand the
application of these methodologies to other bacterial diseases. Fig 1
illustrates the experimental setup.
Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium responsible for a wide range of
diseases including food poisoning and skin and bone infections.
Penicillin, which was used to treat S. aureus, was quickly rendered
useless as the bacterium evolved to produce penicillinase, an enzyme
that breaks the penicillin molecule apart. As a result,
penicillinase-resistant antibiotics such as methicillin and oxacillin
were developed. Widespread use of these antibiotics led to the emergence
of new strains of the bacterium, methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA)
and oxacillin-resistant S. aureus (ORSA).