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The medications used to treat bacterial diseases are known as antibiotics. The most common antibiotics include penicillin, Macrolides, and Cephalosporin.
Antibiotics work in different ways to stop bacteria from causing disease and that includes;
- Causing mutations in DNA
- Killing the whole the bacteria
- Destroying the bacterial proteins
- Disrupting their cell wall or cell membrane
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Antibiotics are very effective to prevent deadly infections however, it is increasingly evident that bacteria are becoming resistant to a variety of antibiotics and this is a global public health issue.
Global Antibiotic Research and
Development Partnership conducted a study in 11 countries involving 3200 babies
suffering from sepsis. It has been found that antibiotics are causing harm, particularly
in low and middle-income countries. The possible reasons are;
- Healthcare practitioners do not prescribe antibiotics timely (may be due to fear of babies getting resistant)
- There are more cases of sepsis in these countries that require new antibiotics
- Antibiotic resistance
Surprisingly, about 33.3 % of sepsis-related
deaths are caused by antimicrobial resistance.
Superbugs are being created due
to antimicrobial resistance that evades the wide range of antibiotics and is a
major threat to global health.
Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii)
is the major superbug that causes pneumonia and wound infections. It survives
for a longer duration on medical devices and surfaces and is resistant to almost
every antibiotic. It is categorized as a “critical threat” by World Health
Organization”.
Scientists are trying hard to develop effective antibiotics against A. baumannii and the process is going fast due to the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Jonathan Stokes and his team at McMaster University used AI to efficiently process thousands of drugs with known chemical structures and identified 6680 candidates. Out of these, 240 were tested in the lab which resulted in the identification of 9 potential drugs, and further research developed a potent antibiotic (abaucin).
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Abaucin is proven very effective
in the laboratory for treating infected wounds in mice and killing patient-derived A. baumannii samples.
Research is underway to start clinical trials and then approval of the drug by
relevant agencies.
Surprisingly, abaucin is only
effective against the A. baumannii and
not for other bacterial species, making it very selective and specific and
there are fewer chances of resistance against this particular drug.
Dr. Stokes and his team are planning to work on other problematic bugs such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa using AI.
Prof Dame Sally Davies (the
former chief medical officer for England and government envoy on anti-microbial
resistance) commends the efforts of Dr. Stokes and his team stating that “the idea
of using AI was "a big game-changer, I'm thrilled to see the work he (Dr. Stokes) is doing, it will save lives".
References
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/16386-antibiotics
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65709834
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