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In a promising discovery, a team of biologists from the University of California at Los Angeles discovered thousands of four- and five-drug antibiotic combinations, which are more effective at removing harmful bacteria than the ideas advocated.
The results, published in the journal npj Systems Biology and Applications, could be a major step in protecting public health at a time when pathogens and common infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
Scientists have traditionally believed that combining more than two drugs to fight harmful bacteria would produce diminishing returns.
"There is a tradition of using only one drug, maybe two," said Pamela Yeh, one of the study's lead authors.
"We are proposing an alternative that looks very promising, we should not be limited to single or dual drug combinations in our medical toolbox, and we anticipate that many or more of these combinations will work much better than existing antibiotics. added Yeh, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Working with eight antibiotics, the researchers analyzed how all possible combinations of four and five drugs, including many different doses – or 18,278 combinations in total – were acting against E. coli.
They hoped that some of the combinations would be very effective at killing the bacteria, but they were surprised by the number of powerful combinations that they discovered.
For each combination tested, the researchers first predicted the efficiency with which they thought they could stop the growth of E. Coli.
Of the four-drug combinations, 1,676 groups performed better than expected. Of the five drug combinations, 6,443 groups were more effective than expected.
"I've been blown away by the number of effective combinations increasing the number of drugs," said Van Savage, the other senior author of the study.
In addition, 2,331 four-drug combinations and 5,199 five-drug combinations were less effective than the researchers expected, said Elif Tekin, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California .
Yeh said that while the results are very promising, the drug combinations have been tested in a lab only and are probably at least years of evaluation as possible treatments for people.
Researchers are creating open source software based on their work that they plan to make available to other scientists next year.
Ians
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