A Pap stain shows the type of changes that can be induced by infection with herpes simplex virus.WIKIMEDIA, NEPHRONLast week, Paulo Verardi got a paper cut refilling the printer in his office at the University of Connecticut. The virologist started looking through a drawer for some Neosporin, and it got him thinking about what the cream really does. A study he was reading that same day found that treating mice topically with antibiotics in a class known as aminoglycosides—which include neomycin, the antibiotic in Neosporin—helped them fend off infection by some viruses. “This opens our mind to all of these other off-target effects that any drug can have, including antibiotics,” he explains.
In the study, out today (April 9) in Nature Microbiology, immunologist Akiko Iwasaki of Yale University and colleagues report that the drugs induced changes in gene expression in the host, stimulating an innate immune response in the areas where they were applied that helped the mice resist some viral pathogens.
“It does show an unexpected impact of antibiotics on viral diseases,” Iwasaki says.
Other groups had previously examined the effect of antibiotics on viral infections in either animals or cultured cells, with results that ranged from dramatically decreased to highly increased susceptibility, depending on the particular antibiotic and virus used. In some studies, the antibiotics’ effect on gut microbiota seemed to explain the changes in vulnerability.
Iwasaki’s research team had found earlier that treating mice ...
