|
Posted by United Press International on April 14, 2010, 11:34 am
Please log in for more thread options
HAMILTON, Ontario, April 14 (UPI) -- A team of Canadian and
British scientists says it has identified the specific mechanism
that triggers bacterial resistance to vancomycin.
The researchers -- led by Professor Gerry Wright, director
of the Michael DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at
McMaster University -- said they determined for the first time how
bacteria recognize and develop resistance to vancomycin -- a
powerful antibiotic used to treat superbug infections.
"Vancomycin is the antibiotic of last resort and is only
given when all other treatments fail," said Wright. "For years it
was thought that resistance would be slow to emerge since vancomycin
works in an unusual way. But with the widespread use of the drug to
treat infections caused by the hospital superbug MRSA, it has become
a serious clinical problem."
MRSA is the short-form for methicillin-resistant
staphylococcus aureus, a bacterial infection that's highly resistant
to some antibiotics, the scientists said.
Wright and his team studied the vancomycin-resistance
mechanism and showed bacteria detect vancomycin itself.
"We have finally cracked the alarm system used by bacteria,
and hopefully new antibiotics can be developed that don't set it
off," said Mark Buttner, a study collaborator and senior scientist
at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England.
The research appears in the early online edition of the
journal Nature Chemical Biology.
| 
XML Sitemap