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Stop the Beast!

This article is excerpted from Science News
from Jan. 17, 2009:

As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. One potential new bactericide has now been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.

The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.

Hydramacin proved to be extremely effective though; in a series of laboratory experiments, this protein could kill a wide range of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including clinically-isolated drug-resistant strains like Klebsiella oxytoca (a common cause of nosocomial infections). Hydramacin works by sticking to the bacterial surface, promoting the clumping of nearby bacteria, then disrupting the bacterial membrane.

Grötzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.

The full citation of this published work is:

Jung et al. Hydramacin-1, Structure and Antibacterial Activity of a Protein from the Basal Metazoan Hydra. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2008; 284 (3): 1896

This discovery is a monumental achievement and I suspect that before 5 years have passed, powerful new, effective treatments for bacterial infections will appear. And it is about time, in my opinion. I think most physicians state the "party line" about antibiotic resistance a bit too much. It is illogical. If you give antibiotics to a patient with NO BACTERIA (which is the physician's argument AGAINST GIVING ANTIBIOTICS), there is really no logical way the claim of "increased antibiotic resistance" can even be made. It is all b*llsh*t. The truth is that antibiotic resistance can and does arise when people DO NOT TAKE THE FULL PERSCRIPTION OF AN ANTIBIOTIC. Pure and simple. It annoys the hell out of me when I run into a physician who tries to bulldoze me with nonsense.

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