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The effectiveness of antibiotics can be changed by combining them with each other, non-antibiotic drugs or even with food additives. That's what says a study published in the journal "Nature" on Wednesday.
Depending on the bacterial species, some combinations prevent antibiotics from functioning to their full potential, while others begin to fight antibiotic resistance, researchers report.
In the first large-scale screening of its kind, scientists traced about 3000 drug combinations in three different pathogenic bacteria.
The research was conducted by Nbados Typas of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance
The overuse and abuse of antibiotics has led to widespread resistance to antibiotics. Specific drug combinations may help fight multidrug – resistant bacterial infections, but they are largely unexplored and rarely used in clinics
Therefore, in this study, the team has systematically studied l '. effect of matched antibiotics on each other, as well as other drugs and food additives on different species.
While many drug combinations studied decreased the effect of antibiotics, there were more than 500 drug combinations that improved the results of the antibiotic. A selection of these positive pairs was also tested on multidrug – resistant bacteria isolated from patients from infected hospitals and showing improved effects of antibiotics.
When vanillin – the vanilla donor compound has its characteristic taste – was badociated with a specific antibiotic known as spectinomycin, helped the antibiotic to penetrate bacterial cells and inhibit their growth.
Spectinomycin was originally developed in the early 1960s to treat gonorrhea, but is rarely used now because of the bacterial resistance that has developed against it. However, in combination with vanillin, it may become clinically relevant again and used for other pathogens.
"Among the combinations tested, it is one of the most effective and promising synergies we have identified," says Ana Rita Brochado, first author of the article and researcher at the EMBL. Combinations like this could extend the arsenal of weapons of war against antibiotic resistance.
Interestingly, however, vanillin reduces the effect of many other types of antibiotics. The article showed that vanillin works similarly to aspirin to decrease the activity of many antibiotics – although their effects on human cells have not been tested, they are probably different.
According to Nbados Typas, combinations of drugs that decrease the effect of antibiotics could also be beneficial to human health: "Antibiotics can cause collateral damage and side effects, as they also target healthy bacteria. The drug combinations are very selective and often only affect a few bacterial species, "he says.
"In the future, we could use combinations of drugs to selectively prevent the harmful effects of antibiotics on healthy bacteria, which would also reduce the development of antibiotic resistance, because healthy bacteria would not be put under pressure to become antibiotics. resistance to antibiotics, which can then be transferred to dangerous bacteria. "
This research is the first large-scale screening of drug combinations in different bacterial species in the laboratory.The compounds used have already been approved for safe use in humans, but studies in mice and clinical studies are still needed to test the efficacy of specific drug combinations in humans.
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