A new antibiotic effectively treats Clostridium difficile infection in mice and also helps prevent new spores from forming (yellow photo).
Jeshina Janardhanan and Yuanyuan Qian
New antibiotics are not only more effective than our first-line treatment Clostridium difficile However, studies in mice show that the risk of reinfection is also greatly reduced.
it’s difficult It causes symptoms such as abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever and, in extreme cases, severe dehydration and kidney failure. Such infections kill about 13,000 people each year in the United States alone.
As such, it’s currently one of five antibiotic-resistant infections listed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an “urgent threat.”“but that deadline really is a class of its own.
“Clostridium difficile The infection causes more than seven times as many deaths as the remaining four CDC urgent threats combined,” said Mayland Chang of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who is leading the way in research to identify new antibiotics. He is also the lead author.
it’s difficult Often the intestine becomes infected after taking antibiotics to clear another infection. it can eliminate their gut microbiota, it’s difficult Often inhabited when people breathe airborne spores in hospitals.
Vancomycin, a first-line antibiotic, is effective for the first infection but becomes less effective after that.
“Vancomycin is inactive against spores and recurrent it’s difficult Infections after vancomycin administration remain a major problem,” said Alexander Holtz of the University of Minnesota.
This means that bacterial spores can sit quietly in the body and cause infection years later. it’s difficult A second infection will follow, says Chang. She says 40% of those with a second infection develop a third infection, and 65% of those with a third infection develop a fourth infection.
She and her group tried to break the cycle of reinfection. They searched databases of antibacterial molecules to screen for compounds with activity against specific types of bacterial binding proteins. This gave her two compounds, oxadiazole 1 and oxadiazole 2. in vitro test, both compounds killed it’s difficult When applied at the same concentration as vancomycin.
Oxadiazole is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. However, in the case of the intestinal infection that is the problem, the drug needs to stay in the gut. However, oxadiazole 1 remained intact.in the series of it’s difficult In infection studies, oxadiazole 1 protected mice from death approximately 30% better than vancomycin. Infected mice given oxadiazole 1 lost weight within 3–5 days, whereas mice given vancomycin remained underweight for several weeks after the initial infection.
But perhaps the most promising result was how the drug stopped persistent infections. oxadiazole 1 block 2 it’s difficult A protein that helps bacteria form drug-resistant spores. After 3 weeks of treatment, vancomycin-treated mice had repeated infections with still detectable spores in their faeces. There were no reinfections during the study period.
Findings May Suggest New Treatments C. Difference human infection. Another promising treatment is fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). FMT receives stool from an uninfected donor to reconstitute a healthy gut flora. Two of his FMT-based drugs on the market were recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but these are not always effective.
New drug development is absolutely necessary for treatment it’s difficultsays Khoruts.
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