The rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, along with the slowed rate of new antibiotic development, has prompted researchers to look for alternative therapies to fight disease-causing pathogens. New linkurl:research,;http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nchembio.559.html published yesterday (April 25) ahead-of-print in Nature Chemical Biology, provides evidence that combining antibiotics with marketed drug compounds could be one answer, uncovering previously unknown antibacterial functions of drugs that boost the effectiveness of antibiotics. "This is a really ingenious approach that, frankly, we need a lot more of," said linkurl:Christopher Graber,;http://dhaake.bol.ucla.edu/cjg.htm an infectious disease physician in the Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System who was not involved in the research. "It opens up a whole new field of combining antibiotics with non-antibiotics," agreed Mark Riddle, a research medical officer at the linkurl:Naval Medical Research Center's Enteric Diseases Department;http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmrc/Pages/id_ed.htm who was not involved with the research. "I would think that this paper is going to get a lot of conversations started."
 |
Pseudomonas aeruginosaEscherichia coliStaphylococcus aureusP. aeruginosaE. coliL. Ejim et al., "Combinations of antibiotics and nonantibiotic drugs enhance antimicrobial efficacy," Nature Chemical Biology, doi:10.1038/nchembio.559, 2011.
Interested in reading more?
Become a Member of
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
