Could novel vaccines or even a medieval recipe for eye balm provide new ways to defeat the teeming armies of antibiotic-resistant superbugs?
There is no doubt we desperately need new solutions to tackle infectious bacteria: the World Health Organisation (WHO) lists antimicrobial resistance as a top ten global health threat, saying that by 2050 it will kill more people than cancer if resistance keeps rising at current rates.
Nor can we rely on better antibiotics.
In April, the WHO warned that none of the 43 antibiotics now being developed can beat the world’s 13 most lethal bacteria, such as Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, both of which cause blood infections and pneumonia.
Vaccines are one of the most promising candidates against teeming armies of antibiotic-resistant superbugs
So scientists are taking a different tack and developing powerful non-antibiotic alternatives.
Vaccines are one of the most promising candidates.
Of course, we normally think that vaccines protect us against viruses such as Covid, but investigators are learning how to wield them against killer drug-resistant bacteria, either to treat infections or to prevent them.
Last month, U.S. researchers announced they have developed a vaccine against antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia and infects some 10,000 people in England and Wales each year.
To alert our immune systems to recognise and attack the Klebsiella bacterium, the scientists took a tell-tale protein from its outer skin and inserted it onto the outside of an inactive form of E. coli bacteria.
In tests, inoculated mice successfully beat off Klebsiella infection, researchers at Tulane University reported in the journal Science Immunology.
What’s more, rather than being injected, the vaccine only needs to be inhaled, making it easier to protect vulnerable patients in hospitals.
Inhaling the vaccine also appears to prime the lung’s immune cells very efficiently to fight infection from bacteria, the researchers found.
Dr Jay Kolls, a professor of internal medicine who led the study, says this approach could defeat other multi-drug-resistant species of lung-infecting bacteria.
‘The major cause of pneumonia in the world is Streptococcus pneumoniae, and there’s no reason why this technology theoretically couldn’t be used for that pathogen as well,’ he says.
Vaccines are also being developed against common bacterial illnesses that are often resistant to antibiotics.
In another study published last month, Canadian researchers reported how one vaccine has showed up to 90 per cent success in protecting women against the misery of recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) in a trial involving more than 1,400 patients.
The vaccine, called Uromune, is delivered by an oral spray and contains inactivated bacteria of the four most common resistant strains that cause UTIs. This primes patients’ immune systems to target them.
It has already been given to more than 20,000 women in Canada as part of a pre-approval safety-testing programme.
But while the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence says antibiotic-resistant UTIs are increasing, the Uromune vaccine is not yet approved for NHS use (although the treatment may be obtained privately). Regulators are waiting for the outcome of long-term international trials.
Meanwhile, scientists in Spain revealed this month that they have developed a novel way of killing lethal antibiotic-resistant bacteria — by pitting infectious bacteria against each other.
The new approach by scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation and Pulmobiotics in Barcelona came out of research into antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus that grows on the surfaces of implants such as catheters, pacemakers and artificial hips, causing deeply invasive and highly dangerous infections.
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