New technique allows for identification of potential drugs to fight resistant bacteria
2021-06-20
(Press-News.org) Washington, DC - June 20, 2021 - Researchers from the Miami University in Ohio have optimized a new technique that will allow scientists to evaluate how potential inhibitors work on antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This technique, called native state mass spectrometry, provides a quick way for scientists to identify the best candidates for effective clinical drugs, particularly in cases where bacteria can no longer be treated with antibiotics alone. This research will be presented at the American Society for Microbiology World Microbe Forum online conference on June 21, 2021.
Overuse of antibiotics in the last century has led to a rise in bacterial resistance, leading to many bacterial infections that are no longer treatable with current antibiotics. In the United States each year, 2.8 million people are diagnosed with a bacterial infection that is resistant to one or more antibiotics, and 35,000 people die due to the resistant infection according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"One method of combatting antibiotic resistance is using a combination drug/inhibitor therapy," said Caitlyn Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry, presenting author on the study. An example of this type of therapy is Augmentin, a prescription antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections of the respiratory tract, which is composed of the antibiotic amoxicillin and the inhibitor clavulanic acid. Clavulanic acid inactivates a key protein that the bacterium uses to become resistant to amoxicillin. With the bacterial protein inactivated, the antibiotic -- amoxicillin -- is left to kill the bacteria, thereby treating the infection.
Before any new inhibitor can be used in the clinic, scientists need to have a complete understanding of how the inhibitor works. In the current study, Thomas and her team studied a bacterial protein called metallo-beta-lactamase, which renders many clinical strains of bacteria resistant to all penicillin-like antibiotics. Penicillin-like antibiotics make up over 60% of the entire antibiotic arsenal that is available to treat bacterial infections.
While many research labs throughout the world are attempting to create new inhibitors that inactivate metallo-beta-lactamases, Thomas and collaborators instead analyze how these new inhibitors work. "Because metallo-beta-lactamases contain two metal ions we are able to use a variety of spectroscopic techniques to study them," said Thomas. "These experiments give us more insight into how to inhibitor behaves and whether it could potentially be a candidate for clinical use in the future."
Hundreds of potential inhibitors have been reported in the literature, and several patents have been filed dealing with metallo-beta-lactamase inhibitors. Some of the reported inhibitors work by removing a required component of the metallo-beta-lactamase. These same inhibitors may remove this same required component of other proteins in humans, causing serious side effects. Other inhibitors bind directly to the metallo-beta-lactamase and inactivate the protein; inhibitors of this type are optimal for any new inhibitor that could be used in the clinic.
INFORMATION:
This work was completed by Caitlyn A. Thomas, Zishuo Cheng, John Paul Alao, Kundi Yang, Richard C. Page and Andrea N. Kravats under the direction of Michael W. Crowder at Miami University, Oxford, OH and is funded by NIH (GM134454).
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-06-20
Washington, D.C. - June 20, 2021 - Although two SARS-CoV-2 variants are associated with higher transmission, patients with these variants show no evidence of higher viral loads in their upper respiratory tracts compared to the control group, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study found.
The emergence and higher transmission of the evolving variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been concerning. The researchers investigated B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in the UK, and B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa, to evaluate if patients showed higher ...
2021-06-20
(Vienna, Sunday, 20 June, 2021) Women who suffer from migraines are more likely to endure obstetric and postnatal complications, a study presented today at the 7th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) has found.
Pregnant women with migraines had a higher risk of developing obstetric and post partum complications. Migraine pregnant women had increased risk of been admitted to high-risk departments- 6% in non-migraine pregnant women, 6.9% in migraine without aura and 8.7% in pregnant women who suffer from migraine with aura.
Pregnant migraine patients had significantly increased risk of gestational diagnosis ...
2021-06-19
Historically, shared resources such as forests, fishery stocks, and pasture lands have often been managed with an aim toward averting "tragedies of the commons," which are thought to result from selfish overuse. Writing in BioScience (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/biosci/biab052), Drs. Senay Yitbarek (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Karen Bailey (University of Colorado Boulder), Nyeema Harris (University of Michigan), and colleagues critique this model, arguing that, all too often, such conservation has failed to acknowledge ...
2021-06-19
Cardiac surgeons may be able to better plan operations and improve their surgical field view with the help of a robot. Controlled through a virtual reality parallel system as a digital twin, the robot can accurately image a patient through ultrasound without the hand cramping or radiation exposure that hinder human operators. The international research team published their method in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica.
"Intra-operative ultrasound is especially useful, as it can guide the surgery by providing real-time images of otherwise hidden devices and anatomy," said paper author Fei-Yue Wang, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Management and Control of ...
2021-06-19
Patients with brain injury (caused by stroke or trauma) primarily rely on rehabilitation therapy for recovery, as there are no other known effective treatment methods. The rate of recovery from brain injury observed in adults is significantly slower (or the recovery is impossible) than that observed in young children. The consensus among researchers is that the number of excess neural stem cells capable of restoring brain functions is lower in a mature brain than that in the brain of young children.
A Korean research team reported a novel mechanism to describe the brain injury recovery process. The researchers reported that when the animal model experiment was conducted, the time taken to recover from a brain injury could be controlled by ...
2021-06-19
Globally, an estimated 10 million people develop tuberculosis (TB) each year and the disease remains a leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Standard short-course anti-TB treatment still requires a regimen of at least six months of antimicrobial drugs, and drug-resistant TB is an increasing public health threat. Even after the traces of TB disease are quashed, patients often suffer from significant sequelae, such as lung scarring. TB survivors have approximately three to four times greater mortality than their local population.
In pulmonary TB, the most common form of active TB disease, the ...
2021-06-19
(Vienna, Saturday, 19 June 2021) Music by Mozart has been shown to have an anti-epileptic effect on the brain and may be a possible treatment to prevent epileptic seizures, according to new research presented today at the 7th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN).
Researchers believe that the acoustic (physical) properties within the music are responsible for this effect.
Listening to the famous 18th century composer's Sonata for Two Pianos K448 led to a 32% reduction in epileptiform discharges (EDs). These are electrical brain waves associated with epilepsy and can cause seizures or bursts of electrical activity that temporarily affect how the brain works.
A team led by Professor Ivan Rektor, from the Epilepsy Centre ...
2021-06-19
Highlights
Primary nephrotic syndrome is characterized by high urinary excretion of protein, low protein in the blood, high cholesterol, and swelling in the arms and legs.
A new analysis highlights the high risk of kidney failure and different cardiovascular complications in patients with primary nephrotic syndrome.
Washington, DC (June 18, 2021) -- A form of kidney disease called primary nephrotic syndrome is characterized by high urinary excretion of protein, low protein in the blood, high cholesterol, and swelling in the arms and legs. Patients may face a range of negative health outcomes, but the extent of these effects are unknown. In a study appearing in an upcoming ...
2021-06-19
Highlights
In a study of patients waiting for a kidney transplant, those who experienced various symptoms had a higher risk of dying while on the waitlist.
Symptoms tended to increase or remain unchanged between transplant evaluation and transplantation; however, at 3 months after transplantation, 9 of 11 symptoms lessened.
Washington, DC (June 18, 2021) -- Investigators have examined how various symptoms experienced by individuals with kidney failure are impacted by kidney transplantation. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of CJASN.
People with kidney failure must often deal with numerous symptoms, such as fatigue, cramping, muscle soreness, numbness, dizziness, and loss of appetite. Although kidney transplantation ...
2021-06-19
New findings published this week in Physical Review Letters suggest that carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen cosmic rays travel through the galaxy toward Earth in a similar way, but, surprisingly, that iron arrives at Earth differently. Learning more about how cosmic rays move through the galaxy helps address a fundamental, lingering question in astrophysics: How is matter generated and distributed across the universe?
"So what does this finding mean?" asks John Krizmanic, a senior scientist with UMBC's Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST). "These are indicators of something interesting happening. And what that ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] New technique allows for identification of potential drugs to fight resistant bacteria
