Thousands of new antibiotic combinations to fight superbugs

The researchers identified more than 8,000. New combinations of antibiotics that are surprisingly effective against harmful bacteria. This could help fight the growing problem of drug-resistant bacteria.

Combining more than twooch drugoin order to combat harmful bacteria is not recommended. Drug interactions could cancel out the benefits of administering them separately. This is the view held by many researchers of. Meanwhile, the combinationsoł biologistoat the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) discovered thousands of combinations of four and five antibioticsow, whichore are more effective in destroying harmful bacteria than the prevailing opinions suggest.

The discoveries described in the pages of „npj Systems Biology and Applications” could be an important step toward protecting public health at a time when pathogens and common infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

– There is a tradition of using only one antibiotic, possibly twooch. We offer an alternative thatothat looks very promising. We should not limit ourselves to single drugsow or combinations of twooch drugoIn our medical toolkit. We expect that several of these combinations, perhaps even more than a few, will work much better than existing antibiotics – said Professor Pamela Yeh of UCLA, the mainoThe author of the publication.

Working with eight antibiotics, the researchers analyzed how theob any possible combination of four and five of them, including combinations with roThe drug, at different doses, worked against E. coli. In total, the researchers tested 18,278 combinations of the. They expected that someore combinations will be very effective in killing bacteria, but they were surprised by how many powerful combinations they discovered.

Amongod combinations of four drugsow researchers found 1,676 combinations, whichore performed better than expected. Amongod combinations of five drugsow have discovered as many as 6443 combinations, whichore were more effective than expected.

– I was shocked by the number of effective combinations thatore we discovered. We have significantly increased the number of effective drugsow – noted UCLA’s Van Savage, cooauthor of the publication.

However, on the other hand, 2331 combinations of four lekow and 5199 combinations of five drugsow were less effective than the researchers expected. Someore combinations of four and five drugsow have been effective at least in part, because eacholne drugs have rodifferent mechanisms for targeting E bacteria. coli. But the antibiotics being tested work on rotion ways.

– Someore antibiotics target cell wallsorkowe, others in DNA. It’s like attacking a castle or fortress. Combining roof attack methods may be more effective than a single approach – explained Savge.

Yeh admitted, however, that while the results are very promising, the drug combinationsow have only been tested in laboratory settings and may be years away from evaluating possible therapies for humans.

The authors of the publication are currently developing open access software based on their work, whichore intend to make available to other scientists next year. The software will enable other researchers to analyze rotive combinations of antibioticsow studied by a biologistoat UCLA and the introduction of data from their own testsoin combination lekow.

Previous research on this problem has shown that the use of multiple antibioticsow at the same time could make bacteria even more aggressive and more resistant. The study authors emphasize that the new combinations would have to be used extremely carefully.

– With the persistence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, ktore could take health care back to the pre-antibiotic era, the ability to use combinations of existing antibiotics more judiciously is welcomeoin, whichore individually losing power. The work will accelerate human trials of promising antibiotic combinationsoin the case of bacterial infections, whichor that we are not able to beat today – said Michael Kurilla of the National Institutes of Health, who was not involved in the study.

Health organizations around the world continue to issue warnings about the threat of antibiotic resistance. It is clear that we need all the help we can get. If we fail to solve the problem of drug-resistant bacteria, there may be situations in which theoThe discovery has revealed a detailed picture of the human body.