The ability of bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics has posed as an ongoing obstacle for the medical community. Antibiotic resistance becomes evolutionarily favorable when the resistant microbes are able to thrive within a community. This in turn creates a pressure to maintain these mutated microbes and weed out the susceptible ones. Since mutated organisms are less fit, when resistance is no longer needed the original strain can thrive once again.
Overuse of certain antibiotics is to blame for this dilemma, however antibiotics are often the only known treatment for certain illnesses. Recently, scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have discovered a new way of engineering antibiotics to trick the already resistant bacteria. Silver has been very useful for certain medical tools such as catheters and tracheal tubes due to the low infection rate however until recently no one understood why this was the case. Ruben Morones-Ramirez, Ph.D. investigated the mechanism in which silver affects bacteria and discovered that silver has many properties that alter the bacteria. Firstly, silver creates more reactive oxygen species in the bacteria which in turn damages both enzymes and DNA. It also affects the membrane by making it leakier and therefore weaker.
This new phenomenon does come with questions about both safety and percentage of improvement on previous treatments, both of which are addressed in this study. It was tested in regards to E. coli related urinary tract infections and the results concluded that strains that were originally resistant became susceptible to tetracycline. Similarly, when tested in mice 90 percent of the mice treated with vancomycin and silver survived while only 10 percent survived with the antibiotic alone. In terms of safety, this method was tested both in mice and human cell cultures, both of which were unaffected by the low levels of silver. This new technique could be groundbreaking for the medical community in the fight towards fighting illnesses safely and effectively.
Author: Sam Aaronson