NO Place to Hide for Bacteria with Synthase Inhibitors
Posted by SR in News, tags: antibacterial
Since the late 1980s, when nitric oxide (NO) was first shown to play a physiological role in mammals, this small molecule has been found to be a key mediator of an extraordinary variety of biological processes including blood pressure regulation, learning and memory, penile erection, digestion and the fighting of infection and cancer. Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have shown that bacteria also use NO to protect against oxidative stress and a new study by the same team shows that a broad spectrum of antibacterial drugs kill bacteria (at least in part) by inducing oxidative stress and that this effect is opposed by NO.
As well as opposing the antibacterial effects of oxidative stress, NO also reduced the effectiveness of antibiotics by chemical modifications that resulted in detoxification. Antibiotics were found to be more potent when the NO-mediated bacterial defence was eliminated, suggesting that co-administration of an inhibitor of NO-synthase could increase the effectiveness of existing antibiotics and might make antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA and anthrax more sensitive to available drugs during acute infection.
The study was published on September 11th in the journal Science.
Related posts:
- Stomach Bugs Need Vitamin B6 Approximately half of the world’s population is infected with Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes peptic ulcers and some forms...
- Novel Strategy to Fight TB The bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (TB), mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is notoriously difficult to kill. The most commonly used antibiotics, rifampicin...
- Targeting the Riboswitch Recent research has shown that gene expression can be regulated at the level of mRNA by riboswitches. A riboswitch is...
- Nanoparticles Effective against Brain Infection Brain infections such as bacterial meningitis and encephalitis can cause death or serious disability and are difficult to treat with...
- Inhibiting Bacterial Signalling Reduces Virulence Quorum sensing is used by bacteria to coordinate gene expression according to local population densities. The bacteria secrete signalling molecules...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:29 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Entries (RSS)