Monday, May 16, 2011

Sugar Increases Antibiotics' Potency

From "Add sugar to your antibiotics and crush superbugs" by Esther Inglis-Arkell:
Adding some ordinary sugar to the antibiotic helps it kill off persisters. Bacteria, persister and not, feed on sugars. Persisters survive by shutting down their metabolism when antibiotics strike, but if they're stimulated by sugar, they just keep feeding. This allows the antibiotics to destroy them exactly the way ordinary bacteria are destroyed.

Adding such a simple and widely available compound to existing antibiotics enhances their effectiveness against persisters, and fast. One test showed that a sugared up antibiotic could eliminate 99.9 percent of persisters in two hours, while a regular antibiotic did nothing. Doctors believe that this discovery will help treat urinary tract infections, staph infections, and strep throat, but its most life-saving application may be against the age-old disease tuberculosis. This infection of the lungs kills many people, and is hard to fight off. A little sugar could help save a lot of lives.

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