The World Health Organization (WHO) has disseminated information that one of the most pressing problems of our time is the resistance of many viruses and pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics. No matter how prosaic it may sound, but soon people may begin to die from those diseases that are being successfully treated these days. The fact is that many generations of antibiotics are no longer able to cope with pathogens, which, together with drugs, are constantly evolving, repeating to some extent the eternal military dispute of "armor and a projectile".
Many antibiotics are already covered in dust. According to WHO experts, in the next 6 years, up to 85% of all antibiotics known to date may lose all their effectiveness. This will happen due to the spread of antibiotic resistance (resistance of microorganisms to antibiotics). It is for this reason that doctors around the world are increasingly talking and discussing the possibility of creating new modifications of drugs with the same purpose.
Antibiotics are special substances that successfully inhibit the growth of protozoa and prokaryotic (non-nucleated) living cells. At one time, they became a real salvation for humanity. For example, before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, any cut, even the smallest at first glance, could cause death, not to mention such serious diseases as tuberculosis or pneumonia. Until recently, antibiotics were considered the most effective against pathogens. In addition, the outcome of surgical operations largely depends on how the human body can cope with infections with antibiotics.
At the same time, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at present, almost half of all antibiotic use in humans and about half of their use in animals are ineffective due to the abuse of these drugs. In many ways, it is the excessive use of antibiotics that becomes the fundamental factor in the resistance of pathogens to such drugs, biochemists say.
For more than 80 years, antibiotics have remained the primary treatment for bacterial infections. But the problem of resistance of microorganisms to this type of exposure is very acute, and their effectiveness decreases over time. For this reason, scientists are looking for alternative therapy options. For example, American scientists from Texas suggest using bacteriophages, viruses that selectively infect bacterial cells, as a substitute for antibiotics. Bacteriophages are always present in the human body and are 89% similar to human DNA.
At the same time, Swiss scientists from Bern give preference to nanotechnology. Swiss scientists have managed to create a special substance that has a fundamentally new mechanism of action against known bacteria. This substance is nanoparticles, which consist of lipid layers and resemble the plasma membrane of the host cell. These nanoparticles create false targets and help neutralize and isolate bacteria.
This development helps to replace antibiotics and has already established itself as a very promising technology in its field. The chemical compound of Bernese scientists is able to cope with serious bacterial infections without taking antibiotics, and also avoids the problem of bacterial resistance.
The new approach of Swiss scientists has already been described in the journal Nature Biotechnology. A team from Bern has created artificial nanoparticles called liposomes, which in their structure resemble the membranes of human cells. This direction is being dealt with by a research group headed by Eduard Babiychuk and Annette Draeger. They tested their development with the involvement of a fairly large team of international independent experts.
Today, in clinical medicine, synthetic liposomes are being tried to be used as a means of delivering drugs to patients' organisms. Liposomes, which were created by Eduard Babiychuk and his colleagues, play the role of bait, attracting bacterial toxins to themselves, which are then successfully isolated and neutralized, protecting the cells of the human body from poisons dangerous to them.
In a published press release, Babiychuk noted: “We have managed to create an excellent trap for bacterial toxins. All the poisons that ended up in the patient's body were inevitably attracted to the liposomes, and as soon as the toxin and liposome were combined, their safe excretion from the human body became inevitable. At the same time, our technique does not contribute to the development of bacterial resistance, since it affects only the waste product of pathogens, and not themselves."
Having lost the support of their toxins, bacteria become completely unarmed and can be easily excreted from the body due to the action of the human immune system. Tests of the proposed therapy on laboratory mice have shown that it has prospects: experimental rodents, who were sick with sepsis, were cured after they were injected with liposomes. At the same time, they did not need any additional treatment with antibiotics in the future.
