SuperbugsNew approach to defeating superbugs

A scientific team from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Cleveland Clinic has developed a new way to identify second-line antibiotics that may be effective in killing germs already resistant to a first-line antibiotic – potentially helping overcome antibiotic resistance. This new research provides an approach clinicians could consult when deciding which antibiotic treatment courses will be most effective for patients. The method is based on a mathematical model created by Jacob Scott, principal investigator and associate staff member at Cleveland Clinic, and a clinical assistant professor at the medical school, and colleagues. 

In a recent Nature Communications study, the researchers tested implications of the model in 60 different scenarios with a large panel of currently available antibiotics against E. coli strains that had evolved resistance to the widely-used antibiotic cefotaxime. Case Western says that the researchers, by using numerous evolution experiments, coupled with whole genome sequencing, found drugs with a higher likelihood of being effective after resistance initially emerged to cefotaxime. Once researchers expand these findings to a larger panel of initial therapies, physicians should be able to pinpoint with better accuracy which follow-up antibiotics are likely to work against resistant superbugs – overcoming a shortfall in current approaches.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when invading germs such as bacteria and fungi evolve the ability to outmaneuver antibiotics that used to wipe them out. Instead of being destroyed, the resulting superbugs thrive, sickening – and potentially killing – patients who, in the past, would have been healed by an effective medication. While known for decades, the problem is worsening as a result of over-use of antibiotics in food and when treating patients. Each year in the U.S., at least two million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and at least 23,000 people die as a result.