An antibiotic produced naturally by common soil bacteria kills Mycobacterium species that cause various human diseases, including tuberculosis (TB), according to a report published Monday (September 17) in EMBO Molecular Medicine. The antibiotic even kills drug-resistant strains that escape current TB treatments.
“I seldom get so tickled when I read a paper,” said William Jacobs, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who did not participate in the research. The emergence of multidrug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis “is a big problem,” he said. “This could be a godsend.”
Tuberculosis infections are commonly treated with a mixture of antibiotics, including one called isoniazid, which Jacobs described as “the cornerstone of TB therapy.” Unfortunately, the most common drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis are isoniazid-resistant, he said.
Many researchers, including Stewart Cole, chair of the microbial pathogenesis department at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ...
