|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Discovery May Revive Penicillin to Battle
Antibiotic-Resistant Pneumonia, Staph that Kill Millions
Streptococcus pneumoniae strikes one million a year
of U.S. elderly, 7% die
 March 12, 2008 Senior citizens, by far the most
often requiring hospitalization or other confined care, have been the
most alarmed by the antibiotic-resistant infections festering in health
care institutions. There is welcomed news today that researchers have
learned what makes Streptococcus pneumoniae resistant to antibiotic
penicillin, which could lead to new drugs that can stop this killer, as
well as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
The research, led by University of Warwick,
Coventry, England, could help create a library of designer antibiotics
to use against a range of dangerous bacteria. The report is published in
the March issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
| |
Related Stories |
|
| |
Senior Citizens Must Join Campaign to Require
Hospitals Report Staph Infections
Consumers Union urges Congress to enact HR 1174
(Murphy) to spur hospitals to reduce deadly infections
By Tucker Sutherland, Editor
& Publisher
Nov. 8, 2007
Healthcare Workers Not Doing Enough to Inform
Victims of MRSA Staph Infections
Advice to MRSA patients offered by Alliance for
Prudent Use of Antibiotics
Nov. 7, 2007
Public Wants More News Coverage of MRSA Staph
Infection Increase
Number one story with consumers but number nine in
media coverage
Nov. 7, 2007
Senior Citizens May Escape the Staph Superbug with
Some Good Hygiene
College of American Pathologists says regular hand
washing can decrease the spread of antibiotic-resistant staph infections
- MRSA
Nov. 7, 2007
MRSA Staph Infection
Hits Senior Citizens Hardest, Hospitalizations Up 10 Fold Since 1995
Superbug hospitalizations in 2005 were 3 times over 2000, up 30% in
just one year
Nov. 7, 2007
Senior Citizens Four Times More Likely to be Hit by
Drug Resistant Staph Infection
JAMA study says MRSA more prevalent than assumed and
no longer contained in health care setting
Oct. 16, 2007 -
Statins Linked to Lower Risk of Sepsis Infection
Sepsis is the leading cause of death in non-coronary
intensive care
April 6, 2007
Read the latest news on Senior
Health & Medicine |
|
In the U.S., Streptococcus pneumoniae causes one
million cases a year of pneumococcal pneumonia in the elderly of which
up to 7% are fatal. Worldwide, it causes five million fatal pneumonia
infections a year in children.
This new research has completely exposed how
Streptococcus pneumoniae builds its penicillin immunity and opens up
many ways to disrupt that mechanism and restore penicillin as a weapon
against these bacteria, according to the report.
The research was led by Dr Adrian Lloyd of the
University of Warwicks Department of Biological Sciences along with
other colleagues from the University of Warwick, the Universitι Laval,
Ste-Foy in Quebec, and The Rockefeller University in New York. The
research was funded by Welcome Trust and the MRC.
Penicillin normally acts by preventing the
construction of an essential component of the bacterial cell wall: the
Peptidoglycan. This component provides a protective mesh around the
otherwise fragile bacterial cell, providing the mechanical support and
stability required for the integrity and viability of cells of
Streptococcus pneumoniae and other bacteria including MRSA.
The researchers targeted a protein called MurM that
is essential for clinically observed penicillin resistance and has also
been linked to changes in the chemical makeup of the peptidoglycan that
appear in penicillin resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae isolated from
patients with pneumococcal infections.
The researchers found that MurM acted as an enzyme
that was key to the formation of particular structures within the S.
pneumonia peptidoglycan called dipeptide bridges that link together
strands of the peptidoglycan mesh that contributes to the bacterial cell
wall.
The presence of high levels of these dipeptide
bridges in the peptidoglycan of Streptococcus pneumoniae is a
pre-requisite for high level penicillin resistance.
The Warwick team was able to replicate the activity
of MurM in a test tube, allowing them to define the chemistry of the
MurM reaction in detail and understand every key step of how
Streptococcus pneumoniae deploys MurM to gain this resistance.
The results will allow the Warwick team, and any
interested pharmaceutical researchers, to target the MurM reaction in
Streptococcus pneumoniae in a way which will lead to the development of
drugs which will disrupt the resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae to
penicillin.
Disrupting MRSA
The same research also offers exciting
possibilities to disrupt the antibiotic resistance of MRSA which uses
similarly constructed peptide bridges in the construction of the
peptidoglycan component of its cell wall. Therefore, thanks to this
research, even MRSA could now be opened up to treatment by penicillin.
A further spin-off from this new MurM research, is
that the Warwick led researchers are also able to readily reproduce
every precursor step the bacterial cell uses to create its peptidoglycan.
The tools developed at Warwick open up each step of the creation of the
peptidoglycan (MurA, MurB, MurC etc, etc) used by an array of dangerous
bacteria. This provides a valuable collection of targets for
pharmaceutical companies seeking ways of disrupting antibiotic
resistance in such bacteria.
The University of Warwick part of the research team
have now established a new network of academics from the fields of
chemistry, biology and medicine, as well as pharmaceutical companies to
share and exploit this new treasure trove of targets which could help
create a range of new designer antibiotic based treatments targeted at a
range of bacteria that can cause significant health problems.
This network is the UK Bacterial Cell Wall
Biosynthesis Network or UK-BaCWAN and it is supported by the Medical
Research Council of the UK. The network web site is
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/go/bacwan
What is antibiotic-resistant Streptococcus
pneumoniae?
In the 1940s, penicillin antibiotics became
available and were used effectively to treat pneumococcal infections.
During the 1960s, however, the first pneumococcal bacteria that were not
susceptible ("resistant") to penicillin were discovered in humans. Since
then, penicillin resistant pneumococcal bacteria have been reported all
over the world. By the late 1970s, pneumococci that were resistant to
other types of antibiotics in addition to penicillins were reported.
These "multidrug resistant" pneumococci have now been reported all over
the world.
>>
Read more at National Center for Infectious Disease
Further information about antibiotic-resistant S.
pneumoniae can be found at
CDC Get Smart - General Information about Antibiotic Resistance
Further information on the mechanisms of acquired
resistance among pneumococcal organisms can be found by
searching CDC database.
| |
Every day, fifty Americans die from MRSA because hospitals
arent doing enough to protect patients from these deadly
infections, - Lisa McGiffert, Director of Consumers Unions
Stop Hospital Infections campaign |
|
About MRSA by Mayo Clinic
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
infection is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria often called "staph."
Decades ago, a strain of staph emerged in hospitals that was resistant
to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. Dubbed
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it was one of the
first germs to outwit all but the most powerful drugs. MRSA infection
can be fatal.
>>
Read more at Mayo Clinic
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
