Endolysin-A new tool to overwhelm Super Bugs

The so called super bugs which have emerged during the last few years which are resistant to most known antibiotics may imperil the lives of millions of people infected by them if suitable alternative therapy is not developed fast. Though many scientists are working to evolve satisfactory antidotes to them success has been far and few. One of the reasons is lack of investment in developing new classes of antibiotics that can destroy them. Reckless use of antibiotics for even those afflictions not caused by pathogenic bacteria and for non-medical purpose like incorporating in animal feed for fattening the animals or lacing the growing medium by aqua culture industry have greatly contributed to emergence of super bugs not responsive to normal antibiotics. It has been shown clearly that many bacteria can create biofilms around them which are unimpregnable and therefore inaccessible to the antibiotic molecule making it ineffective. If this film can be breached, the bacterial cells are highly vulnerable to destruction. Such an approach seems to have succeeded with a group of scientists in the Netherlands coming out with a biological agent (endolysins) that can be effective in exploiting the chink in the armor of these pathogens offering alternative therapy for killing drug resistant organisms. Here is a take on this new exciting development.

"In a breakthrough, scientists have developed the first effective alternative to antibiotics that may aid the fight against drug-resistant infections.  In a small patient trial, the drug was shown to be effective at eradicating the superbug Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Researchers said it is unlikely that the infection could develop resistance against the new treatment, which is already available as a cream for skin infections. They hope to develop a pill or an injectable version of the drug within five years. The treatment marks "a new era in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria," according to Mark Offerhaus, chief executive of the biotechnology company Micreos, which is behind the advance. The treatment attacks infections in an entirely different way from conventional drugs and, unlike them, exclusively targets the Staphylococcus bacteria responsible for MRSA, and leaves other microbes unaffected. The approach is inspired by naturally occurring viruses that attack bacteria using enzymes called endolysins. It uses a 'designer' endolysin, Staphefekt, which the scientists engineered to latch on to the surface of bacteria cells and tear them apart, 'The Times' reported. "Endolysins exist in nature, but we've made a modified version that combines the bit that is best at binding to the bacteria with another bit that is best at killing it," said Bjorn Herpers, a clinical microbiologist, who tested the drug at the Public Health Laboratory in Kennemerland, the Netherlands. Conventional antibiotics need to reach the inside of the cell to work, and part of the reason they are becoming less effective is that certain strains of bacteria, such as MRSA, have evolved impenetrable membranes. By contrast, endolysins target basic building blocks on the outside of bacterial cells that are unlikely to change as infections genetically mutate over time. Scientists believe that the results could mark the first of a wave of endolysin-based therapies for infections that conventional drugs are no longer able to treat. About 80 per cent of gonorrhoea infections are resistant to frontline drugs, and multidrug-resistant salmonella, tuberculosis and E coli are regarded as significant threats. Naturally occurring endolysins can attack all of these diseases, and the challenge is to create stable versions that can be packaged as drugs, researchers said." 

It is encouraging to note that new endolysins are being evolved to attack and kill the organisms concerned containing both the cell membrane busting molecule and the killing molecule. Formulations like skin creams, tablets and injections may be in the offing soon and the specter of epidemics caused by these hitherto indestructible vectors may not be that daunting if these developments are taken to their logical conclusion. Interestingly endolysins do not seem to be affecting normal bacteria unlike antibiotics which when taken orally cause considerable havoc in the intestine harming many beneficial bacteria, part of human microbiome, considered critical to the well being of man. Those afflicted by deadly diseases like gonorrhoea, salmonella, tuberculosis, virulent E.coli, etc can heave a sigh of relief if the new therapy is brought to main the stream medical practices.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT PATHOGENS-A NEW APPROACH TO OVER COME THE PROBLEM

Antibiotic resistance is a subject of great concern because almost all antibiotics known to man are ineffective in killing a few highly dangerous pathogens because gross misuse of these drugs at every level of human activities. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics by medical industry, food industry and animal food industry in many case at sub-lethal doses give an opportunity to some microorganisms to develop adequate biological mechanism to make them ineffective or non-lethal. Added to this there is very little progress in discovering new and more powerful antibiotics during the last 3 decades as such endeavors are preposterously costly beyond the economic capacity of private industry. It is in this context that the reported development of a new tool to deal with antibiotic resistant pathogens by a group of scientists from MIT, Boston gives hope for counteracting future epidemics involving such dangerous pathogens.

"The unique approach could be used to genetically engineer bacteria in our bodies to become less dangerous.The technology might also lead to new treatments for metabolic diseases like obesity, the researchers claim. Scientists and politicians have warned that we face a return to the medical "dark ages" if action is not taken against antibiotic resistance.The human body houses ten times more bacterial cells than human ones. This community of bacteria is termed the microbiome and its importance in keeping us healthy is increasingly recognised. One of the problems with current antibiotics is "they hit not only the bad bacteria but also the good bacteria," explained Professor Timothy Lu of the Synthetic Biology Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the team carrying out the new research. "It allows the bad bacteria to flourish." In a series of laboratory experiments published in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers showed they could produce a molecular "conditional-lethality device" capable of highly targeted action against the "bad" bacteria in a consortium of different strains.The new antibiotic uses an RNA-guided nuclease called a "Crispr"to hunt down and chop up target genes inside bacterial cells."

How far this development will get transferred into commercial technology is an unknown factor and only time will unfold the potential of the findings. One of the advantages of this new technology is the antibiotic under the scanner is selective in attacking only the pathogenic bacteria while sparing harmless and beneficial ones that reside in human body. Considering that antibiotic resistant pathogens pose a universal threat to humanity, there is an urgent need for international agencies like WHO to support the MIT project to bring to fruition the scientific findings reported above.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

  

ICE MAKING MACHINE AND TOILET WATER-WHAT IS THE CONNECTION?

Toilets are receiving much more attention than what they really deserve. It was not long ago that some one reported that toilet seat showed less bacteria than that present in a kitchen cutting board! Here comes another report with some shock value that declares that the bacterial quality of crushed ice that is thrown out from the ice making machines in many restaurants is significantly inferior to that of toilet water! How far this is universally true cannot be gauged by the limited studies conducted by the media as a part of their investigative journalism. But it does raise some inconvenient questions regarding the possibility of shirked responsibility of the restaurant management to keep their ice making machine clean and hygienically satisfactory. Also not clear is how serious is the problem vis-a-vis the safety of consumers who visit such ill maintained restaurants. Here is a take on this latest revelation.   

"The Daily Mail collected ice from ten fast-food franchises — McDonald's, Burger King, and Starbucks among them — and determined that in six out of ten locations, those innocuous-seeming cubes contained higher levels of bacteria than the water samples taken from toilet bowls at the same establishments. The Mail doesn't identify the bacteria by type or warn of a specific food-safety risk, instead noting only that four of the samples contained a sufficient bacterial load to present a "hygiene risk." So, does this mean we should all be drinking out of the toilet? The short answer is no, don't drink toilet water, but also, maybe be a little bit wary of ice. In most instances of germy ice, the likely culprit is dirty ice machines, and while the presence of pathogens like E. coli in anything meant for ingestion is cause for alarm, the Mail sort of flubs its own "investigation." The article doesn't make clear how much of the ice taken from each of the ten establishments was tested. Moreover, it doesn't emphasize how much one study parameter — fast-food workers were asked to put the ice into sterilized bags — was flawed, which renders the entire thing somewhat useless. "For the tests," itnotes, "staff were asked to provide a sample of ice in a sterile bag." The reader has to make it to the very end of the article to learn that the worker at Starbucks, for example, "inadvertently" contaminated the sample at the point of collection. While the ice at these places is no doubt bacteria-filled, it might help to have workers trained in taking sterilized samples actually, you know, collecting the sample. Moreover, this kind of study isn't particularly novel. Some highlights from the last ten years:
• In an effort to dissuade her friends from chewing on ice — a habit she found annoying — a 12-year-old kid from Tampa devoted her 2006 middle-school science project to comparing bacterial loads in fast-food ice samples and toilet water. Jasmine Roberts won a few awards and garnered national attention with her conclusion that ice-machine ice was dirtier than toilet water 70 percent of the time.
• A local news affiliate found coliform bacteria in 13 out of 25 ice samples taken from Indianapolis-area bars in 2008.
• The U.K. Health Protection Agency found enterococci and E. coli in 30 percentof ice samples taken from 88 establishments in 2011.
• And it's not just the innards of ice machines that harbor bad germs. All that sugar-filled plastic tubing inside soda machines can feed several gazillion colonies of bad bacteria. In 2010, for example, researchers from Hollins University in Virginia took samples of 90 drinks from 30 soda fountains located within a twenty-mile radius of Roanoke. They found coliform bacteria in 48 percent of the drinks and antibiotic-resistant E. coli in 11 percent.

It's pretty safe to assume that, on a widespread basis, nasty bacteria run the innards of ice machines just like Master Blaster runs Bartertown. Does that mean that ice from fast-food places will make you sick? As with most foods, the risk increases if you are either very old, are very young, or have a compromised immune system. Other than that, these studies are effective at upending one misconception about pathogens in particular: that freezing temperatures destroy bad germs. Instead of comparing ice and toilet water, it'd be good to get samples from a few more surfaces that aren't toilet water, which is usually treated with disinfectants in food service settings, anyhow".

The conclusion by the reporter that the ice is not a safety risk to normally healthy person because bacteria does not survive freezing temperatures cannot be accepted. Scientifically most bacteria might be killed at sub-zero temperatures due to cell disruption but few stubborn cells do survive capable of springing back to active life once favorable conditions are obtained. It is forgotten that many food infection episodes in the West are more or less confined to frozen foods and if such foods which are contaminated during the processing operations or storage are not cooked by the consumer there is a definite risk to the health. Another way of looking at this issue is that if these contaminated ice is used for chilling an alcoholic beverage or a carbonated beverage the safety risk is minimal or nil at at all. Still it is the primary responsibility of the food eateries to clean up their ice machines periodically to ensure that bacteria is not harbored by them. Same is true with thousands of water coolers found so commonly in public places.  

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE-IS THERE A SCIENTIFIC BASIS?

It is a common knowledge that overuse of antibiotics can be harmful to the human beings and if penicillin the earliest discovered antibiotic is more or less useless to day, it is attributed to development of resistance by bacteria to its destructive potential through adaptation over a long period. Of course to day there are many so called broad spectrum antibiotics discovered during the last five decades with much more "fire power" than Penicillin and the need to evolve more of such drugs is necessitated by emergence through mutation strain variants that can adapt to many antibiotics in common use. Use of antibiotics by the meat and poultry industry in the US and other industrially advanced countries is frowned upon by consumer activists as well as pathologists because of the potential for many of the meat pathogens to develop resistance against these antibiotics through continuous use. Another aspect of this practice is the question regarding the necessity to use any antibiotics by the industry if adequate precautions are taken to ensure high degree of sanitation and hygiene during handling. The recent argument by the industry questioning the scientific basis of antibiotic resistance is unfortunate and flies against truth.

"Can you can stuff farm animals together by the thousands and dose them daily with antibiotics, without creating resistant pathogens that affect humans? Yes, of course you can, insists the meat industry. "Not only is there no scientific study linking antibiotic use in food animals to antibiotic resistance in humans, as the US pork industry has continually pointed out, but there isn't even adequate data to conduct a study," the National Pork Producers Council declared in a statement last week. According to the Pork Producers, a recent report from the Government Accounting Office confirms their view. But as Helena Bottemiller in Food Safety News and Tom Laskway on Gristshow, what the GAO is really saying is that regulators like the USDA meat-inspection service have done a lousy job of collecting data on factory-farm antibiotic use. The report states the case bluntly, right in the opening paragraph: HHS [Health and Human Services] and USDA have collected some data on antibiotic use in food animals and on resistant bacteria in animals and retail meat. However, these data lack crucial details necessary to examine trends and understand the relationship between use and resistance. … Without detailed use data and representative resistance data, agencies cannot examine trends and understand the relationship between use and resistance. So the GAO is chastising the oversight agencies for failing to collect good data; and the industry is pretending that the lack of good data implies the lack of an underlying problem. It would be funny if real people weren't dying from what the FDA calls "treatment failure" after being infected with pathogens that antibiotics would normally wipe out. Meanwhile, the GAO makes clear that factory farm antibiotic abuse does pose a threat to public health. The report states it in plain English: Unsanitary conditions at slaughter plants and unsafe food handling practices could allow these bacteria to survive on meat products and reach a consumer. Resistant bacteria may also spread to fruits, vegetables, and fish products through soil, well water, and water runoff contaminated by fecal matter from animals harboring these bacteria. If the bacteria are disease-causing, the consumer may develop an infection that is resistant to antibiotics. While US regulators dither and the meat industry treats their incompetence as vindication, a team of Danish, Australian, and Canadian researchers have brought forth damning evidence on the link between factory farming and resistance. For a study just published in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, the team isolated strains of antibiotic-resistant E. coli found in humans and compared them with resistant strains found in pigs, poultry, and cattle. The result: Resistance in E. coli isolates from food animals (especially poultry and pigs) was highly correlated with resistance in isolates from humans. This supports the hypothesis that a large proportion of resistant E. coli isolates causing blood stream infections in people may be derived from food sources".

One of the critical issues is whether there is any need at all for using antibiotics by the industry when good manufacturing practices are observed. The suspicion that lurks behind such practices is that the industry wants to camouflage the bad quality of its products and sell low quality meat at high prices. How far this argument is true remains to be ascertained by the monitoring agencies of the governments concerned. There is some evidence to show that use of antibiotics is resorted to for increasing the profits of the industry because antibiotics loaded feeds are known to accelerate growth of poultry birds and increase the yield of meat. What ever be the reason, consumers cannot accept such large scale use of life saving drugs like antibiotics every day putting their lives in danger. It is shocking to realize that more than 80% of antibiotics consumed in the US is used up by the meat industry which goes to show the extent of danger posed by this bad industry practice.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com