A new study has shown that an old antibiotic may provide the much-needed protection against some multi-drug resistant bacterial infections.
Multi-drug resistant bacteria are resistant to three or more classes of antimicrobial drugs. MDR bacteria have increased in recent years and pose serious health risks to public health, the World Health Organization has reported.
The study, published in the open-access 'PLOS Biology Journal', indicates this antibiotic may offer a new tool to fight difficult-to-treat and potentially lethal infections.
James Kirby of Harvard Medical School, who is an author of the study, said nourseothricin is a natural product made by a soil fungus, which contains multiple forms of a complex molecule called streptothricin.
“Its discovery in the 1940s generated high hopes for it as a powerful agent against Gram-negative bacteria. Due to their outer protective layer, they are especially hard to kill with other antibiotics," he wrote.
"But nourseothricin proved toxic to kidneys and its development was dropped,” he said. Researchers will explore and seek to nullify it.
However, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections has spurred the search for new antibiotics, leading Kirby and colleagues to take another look at nourseothricin.
Using cryo-electron microscopy, the authors showed streptothricin-F bound extensively to a subunit of the bacterial ribosome, accounting for the translation errors these antibiotics are known to induce in their target bacteria.
Interestingly, the binding interaction is distinct from other known inhibitors of translation, suggesting it may find use when those agents are not effective.
“Based on unique, promising activity, we believe the streptothricin scaffold deserves further pre-clinical exploration as a potential therapeutic for the treatment of multi-drug resistant, Gram-negative pathogens,” Kirby said.
He wrote, “Isolated in 1942, streptothricin was the first antibiotic discovered with potent Gram-negative activity. We find not only is it activity potent, but it is also highly active against the hardiest contemporary multi-drug resistant pathogens and works by a unique mechanism to inhibition protein synthesis.”
According to the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) multi-drug resistant (MDR) iNTS (insecticide Invasive Non-Typhoidal Salmonellosis). It is becoming a growing threat in Kenya.
A 2020 report by Kemi showed researchers found MDR iNTS strains that do not respond to ceftriaxone, which is one of Kenya's last-line antibiotics used to treat severe life-threatening bacterial infections. Kenya. They range from bacterial tuberculosis to pneumonia.
This, according to the research institute, is threatening the ability to successfully treat those who fall ill with iNTS.
(Edited by V. Graham)
