Research Could Lead To New Non-antibiotic Drugs To Counter Hospital Infections

When worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) ate the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa that were raised on low levels of phosphates, unexpected large red spots appeared in their intestinal tracts. The worms then died, so researchers dubbed the condition "Red Death." They theorized that providing P. aeruginosa with phosphate would protect weakened or immunosuppressed hospital patients from this lethal pathogen. (Credit: John Alverdy, University of Chicago Medical Center)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — Lack of an adequate amount of the mineral phosphate can turn a common bacterium into a killer, according to research to be published in the April 14, 2009, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. The findings could lead to new drugs that would disarm the increasingly antibiotic-resistant pathogen rather than attempting to kill it.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the most serious hospital-acquired pathogens. A common cause of lung infections, it is also found in the intestinal tract of 20 percent of all Americans and 50 percent of hospitalized patients in the United States.

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