Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Persistent Bacteria Go Down 166
Doctors have discovered that adding sugar to antibiotics increases their ability to knock out persistent staph infections (abstract). Certain types of bacteria called persisters shut down their metabolic processes when exposed to antibiotics. Adding sugar keeps the bacteria feeding, making them more susceptible to drugs. From the article: "Adding such a simple and widely available compound to existing antibiotics enhances their effectiveness against persisters, and fast. One test showed that a sugared up antibiotic could eliminate 99.9 percent of persisters in two hours, while a regular antibiotic did nothing. Doctors believe that this discovery will help treat urinary tract infections, staph infections, and strep throat, but its most life-saving application may be against the age-old disease tuberculosis. This infection of the lungs kills many people, and is hard to fight off. A little sugar could help save a lot of lives."
Re:Hunting (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but we've yet to develop nano-sized shotguns, so that'll have to wait.
Re:Let me be the first to say it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me be the first to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let me be the first to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a reason why it would remain hard for the bacteria to stay dormant in the presence of antibiotics as long as there is sugar around?
Yes. Bacteria are simple. Feed in presence of food, dormant in absence of food is simple behaviour that can be trivially implemented using some chemical signals. Feed in presence of food and absence of antibiotic, dormant in presence of antibiotic is harder. You have to process two signals, do some weighting, and then select the correct behaviour.
You also need to think about the intermediate steps. A bacterium on the way to evolving this behaviour would almost certainly not get it right first time. If it doesn't feed in the presence of sugar and the presence of non-fatal doses of antibiotics (or the absence of antibiotics), then it will be selected against in favour of ones that do. If it does feed in the presence of antibiotics, then it will die.
Remember, evolution is only good at selecting local maxima, not global maxima, and the path to this involves jumping from one local maximum to another. If someone were intelligently designing bacteria, then it would be a lot easier...
Let's patent it! (Score:2, Insightful)
I can see it now. Drug companies will take their existing antibiotics, add a bit of sugar, and then upcharge $5 per fill for Sugarfukitol over normal Fukitol.
Re:Sing it together! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, it also helps the poison go down...
Read the article itself not just the summary! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Read the article itself not just the summary! (Score:2, Insightful)
Can people please read the article before making inane comments, we are talking about aminoglycosides here not glucose, fructose or sucrose. ...
So this has nothing to do with diabetics or blood sugar.
Err, the antibiotic they tested with was gentamicin, which is an aminoglycoside. The metabolites they tested with it were sugars like glucose and fructose, as well as stuff like glycerol and pyruvate.
So yes, they actually *are* talking about adding sugar.