WIKIPEDIA, NIAIDHumans harboring a type of Staphylococcus bacterium—S. lugdunensis—in their noses have a lower abundance of S. aureus, the kind that can cause nasty infections. The reason, researchers reported today (July 27) in Nature, is that S. lugdunensis produces a bactericidal compound that wards off the pathogenic bug and shows promise as a therapeutic.
“That’s a big deal, since preventing S. aureus from growing in the nostril is an important challenge in preventing staph infections,” Michael Fischbach of the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study told Scientific American.
The research team, led by Andreas Peschel at the University of Tübingen, Germany, looked for snot bacteria that could inhibit the growth of S. aureus, which led the group to S. lugdunensis. The scientists then discovered S. lugdunensis’s weapon, an antibiotic they dubbed lugdunin. Experiments in mice showed lugdunin could treat S. aureus infections—even drug-resistant forms.
“We’ve found a new concept of finding antibiotics,” Peschel said this week at the EuroScience Open Forum, according to Science. “We have preliminary evidence at least in the nose ...
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