Posted on 08/21/2002 1:25:26 PM PDT by anymouse
U.S. scientists have made a breakthrough which they believe could thwart one of the most nightmarish forms of terrorism -- an attack with antibiotic-resistant biological weapons.
The scientists, investigating the biowarfare agent anthrax, say they have found a form of treatment that may make it virtually impossible for anthrax germs to mutate into a resistant strain.
Similar methods could be used to fight a host of other infections, opening a new approach to the treatment of disease, scientists familiar with the research said.
In a paper published in the British science journal Nature, researchers from the Rockefeller University in New York said they had cured a disease in mice produced by anthrax-like bacteria, using a protein produced by a bacteria-killing virus.
The treatment saved nearly 70 percent of mice injected with the anthrax-like bacteria, which would normally kill the rodents within five hours.
It was the first time scientists had treated bacteria with the proteins used by bacteria-killing viruses, which the team said could provide "an enormous untapped pool" of new treatments for bacterial diseases of all kinds.
Stephen Leppla, of the National Institutes of Health near Washington D.C., who was asked by Nature to review the research, told Reuters Wednesday it was an "incredibly clever idea, and it certainly defines a new way to kill bacteria.
"It's still clearly an early stage, but I think a lot of people are going to try to apply this therapy to other pathogens," said Leppla, a 22-year anthrax research veteran.
REPLACEMENT FOR CIPRO?
So far, traditional antibiotics have been the only way to cure anthrax, as millions learned during the U.S. panic last year when five people were killed and 13 became ill after contact with anthrax-laced letters sent through the mail.
Those who thought they might have had contact with the bacteria were advised to take tablets of the antibiotic ciproflaxin, or "cipro," and people rushed to buy the drug.
But bacteria often become immune to antibiotics, a process that can be accelerated by germ warfare scientists using genetic engineering. An antibiotic-resistant strain of the disease would be a far more terrifying biowarfare agent.
The Rockefeller University team relied on a virus, called a bacteriophage, which attacks the anthrax bacteria. In their paper, the scientists said the virus produces a protein called a lysin, which wrecks the cell wall of anthrax bacteria.
They said they had tried and failed to breed bacteria strains resistant to lysin, despite using methods that easily bred bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics.
Leppla said new strains of the bacteria were unlikely to develop cell walls that the lysin could not "chew through."
"They have targeted the cell wall structure, and it would be very hard for the bacteria to mutate to change that structure so it could become immune to the lysin," he said.
The scientists also found that within seconds of being attacked by the lysin, the anthrax bacteria produced an easily detected chemical called ATP. That could make it far easier to confirm and respond to an anthrax attack.
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It has been shown to be effective in mice, and apparently China uses it already?
Anyway, I understand that pneumonia is mostly caused by bacteria and that many people, mostly elderly, die from it each year. Wouldn't it be nice if this treatment could be applied to pneumonia?
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