Increasing Efficacy of Antibiotics | 23 Jul 2022

Why in News?

Recently, Scientists have developed a new approach to revitalise the efficacy of existing antibiotics.

What are the Findings?

• Scientists used antibiotics in combination with antibiotic adjuvants -- ingredients that can help counter resistance to existing antibiotics.
  • Antibiotic adjuvants are nonantibiotic compounds that enhance antibiotic activity either by blocking resistance or by boosting the host response to infection.
• The Scientists incorporated cyclic hydrophobic moieties (portion of a molecule) in a triamine-containing compound, the adjuvants thus developed, weakly perturbed the membrane of bacteria.
  • Resistance to antibiotics occurs through a variety of molecular mechanisms, including decreased drug permeability, active efflux, alteration or bypass of the drug target, production of antibiotic-modifying enzymes, and physiological states such as biofilms that are less susceptible to antibiotic activity.
  • Triamine: A compound containing three amino groups.
  • Hydrophobic Moieties: These are water fearful and they will not dissolve in water.
  • Cyclic: A molecule is cyclic if its atoms form a ring structure.
• It resulted in countering of membrane-associated resistance elements like permeability barrier and expulsion of antibiotics by efflux pumps.
  • The efflux pumps lower the intracellular antibiotic concentration, allowing bacteria to survive at higher antibiotic concentrations.
• When these adjuvants are used in combination with antibiotics that had been rendered ineffective due to such membrane-associated resistance elements, the antibiotics are potentiated, and the combination is effective in killing bacteria.

What is the significance of the Study?

• This strategy can combat the most critical group of bacteria enabling the existing antibiotic arsenal to be used again for complicated infections. It can help counter the rising menace of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).
• It can help strengthen the activity of obsolete antibiotics and bring them back into use for treating complicated infections.

What are Antibiotics and Drug Resistance?

• Antibiotics:
  • Antibiotics are remarkable drugs capable of killing biological organisms in one’s body without harming the body.
  • These are used for everything from preventing infections during surgeries to protecting cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
    • India is the world’s largest consumer of antibiotics. India’s excessive antibiotic usage is leading to a powerful never before seen mutation within bacteria.
• Drug Resistance:
  • Drug resistance happens when one overuses antibiotics in the treatment of humans, animals as well as plants.
    • When a new antibiotic is introduced, it can have great, even lifesaving results but only for some time. After that, the bacteria adapts and gradually the antibiotics become less effective.
  • Antibiotic resistance has the potential to affect people at any stage of life. When a person is infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria, not only the treatment of that patient becomes difficult, but antibiotic resistant bacteria may spread to other people as well.
  • When antibiotics do not work, the situation may lead to more complicated diseases, the use of stronger and expensive drugs and gradually more deaths caused by bacterial infections.
  • The spread of antibiotic resistance worldwide is undermining decades of progress in fighting bacterial infections.

Source: PIB