{"id":2088672,"date":"2019-06-24T08:17:13","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T12:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=2088672"},"modified":"2019-06-24T08:17:53","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T12:17:53","slug":"heteroresistance-antibiotic-combinations-superbugs-2088672-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/heteroresistance-antibiotic-combinations-superbugs-2088672-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Antibiotic combos could defeat superbugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
A sneaky form of antibiotic resistance is more widespread than thought, report researchers, but tracking “heteroresistance” could help choose drug combinations that can defeat “invincible” bacteria.<\/p>\n
The findings show that combinations chosen in this way effectively saved mice from otherwise lethal infections. Scientists say they still need to demonstrate efficacy in hospitalized patients.<\/p>\n
Heteroresistance means that standard tests used in hospital labs would not always detect resistance to a given antibiotic because only a small subpopulation of the bacterial cells are resistant to the drug.<\/p>\n
But that subpopulation quickly emerges and thrives when that particular antibiotic is thrown at the bacterial infection, says David Weiss, director of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center and associate professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at Emory University School of Medicine, Emory Vaccine Center, and Yerkes National Primate Research Center.<\/p>\n
“We can think of heteroresistance as bacteria that are ‘half resistant’,” Weiss says. “When you take the antibiotic away, the resistant cells go back to being just a small part of the group. That’s why they’re hard to see in the tests that hospitals usually use.”<\/p>\n
In clinical labs, researchers sometimes incorrectly classify heteroresistance as “susceptible,” which could lead to treatment failure. Other times, scientists classify it as uniformly resistant.<\/p>\n