from the Emory-has-the-Devil's-Walking-Stick-on-campus?-This-explains-a-lot dept.
A study led by scientists at Emory Univeristy has shown that extracts from plants used in the South during the civil war have antimicrobial properties effective against several modern multi-drug resistant bacteria.
During the height of the Civil War, the Confederate Surgeon General commissioned a guide to traditional plant remedies of the South, as battlefield physicians faced high rates of infections among the wounded and shortages of conventional medicines. A new study of three of the plants from this guide -- the white oak, the tulip poplar and the devil's walking stick -- finds that they have antiseptic properties.
The antebellum antimicrobials, harvested right on campus, were found to be effective in testing against modern Acinetobacter baumannii, Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae
"Our findings suggest that the use of these topical therapies may have saved some limbs, and maybe even lives, during the Civil War," says Cassandra Quave, senior author of the paper and assistant professor at Emory's Center for the Study of Human Health and the School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology.
The guide was named the "Standard supply table of the indigenous remedies for field service and the sick in general hospitals." and lists botanical names, dosages, and medical properties of various native southern plants.
Even so, amputation was a common treatment for infected wounds and one in 13 surviving Civil War soldiers went home missing one or more limbs.
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University of Sheffield and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) scientists have discovered several new related (dinuclear RuII) compounds which visualize and kill gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli (note - no word on whether it works on synthetic E.coli)
Bacteria are classified generally by what type of staining works on them using a method developed in the 1800's by Hans Christian Gram. 'Gram-negative' bacteria retain a stain color that shows them as a pinkish red coloring, these bacteria have cell walls that make it difficult to get drugs into them and many gram-negative bacteria have become significantly or even completely resistant to available drug treatments.
A new drug in the difficult gram-negative space is particularly important. Drug resistant bacteria already cause the deaths of over 50 thousand people a year in the US and EU alone, and as many as 10 million people a year could die worldwide every year by 2050 due to antibiotic resistant infections.
Doctors have not had a new treatment for gram-negative bacteria in the last 50 years, and no potential drugs have entered clinical trials since 2010.
The new drug compound has a range of exciting opportunities. As Professor Jim Thomas explains: "As the compound is luminescent it glows when exposed to light. This means the uptake and effect on bacteria can be followed by the advanced microscope techniques available at RAL.
"This breakthrough could lead to vital new treatments to life-threatening superbugs and the growing risk posed by antimicrobial resistance."
The studies at Sheffield and RAL have shown the compound seems to have several modes of action, making it more difficult for resistance to emerge in the bacteria.
Better yet
Mammalian cell culture and animal model studies indicate that the complex is not toxic to eukaryotes, even at concentrations that are several orders of magnitude higher than its minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).
The researchers plan to test the compounds against additional multi drug resistant bacteria next.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday May 27 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
I grew up in Virginia with a huge double-trunked one in the backyard. It was one of those trees that made us a bit nervous during storms, but we never cut it down. Those flowers definitely had a medicine-like aroma, and I seem to recall that they'd be raining down in the back yard about this time of year, maybe a few weeks from now.
We never did anything with them though, except rake up the debris and send it to the curb.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:50PM
One if the issues with drugs is that they often only use one compound at a time. Bacteria become immune to that one compound.
Many herbs may have several compounds that work together to make immunity more difficult. An herb may have a compound that inhibits an enzyme that the bacteria needs. The bacteria could then produce a modified enzyme but the herb may have another compound that also inhibits that modified enzyme too making immunity more difficult. Or the second compound may also attach to an allosteric site or inhibit a different important enzyme.
Drug manufacturers try to look for a 'silver bullet' but sometimes they should consider mixing multiple compounds together and running tests on compound mixtures that work together in different ways and have synergistic effects. I don't know why they don't do that. It's probably better than trying to use plants that have inconsistent chemical compositions and may not be formulated to produce a solution as effective as one formulated in a lab.
This could also be applied to cancer as well. Doctors take cancer cells and culture them on petri dishes and they try different drugs to see which one works the best. Then they give the patient the most promising drugs. The drug may wipe out most of the cancer cells but some cancer cells may be resistant to that drug. Those cancer cells will then proliferate and trying to cure them later could be difficult. However, a combination of multiple compounds working together might make immunity more difficult as the initial compound might eliminate most of the cancer cells while a second compound might eliminate the ones that are resistant to that initial compound if it were to be used with the first one to begin with.
Also the FDA may approve a drug that works against many cancers but all cancers are different and may be vulnerable to different compounds. Doctors and chemists should be allowed try 10 drugs on someone's cancer cell, see which one is most effective (using normal cells as a control to make sure they aren't damaged) and then to make slight modifications to the compound that's most effective to test against until they get a compound that's even more effective than the original.
So for instance they try drugs A, B, C, D and E.
They find that for your type of cancer (or infection) drug C works best. They then make slight modifications to C
C, C1, C2, C3, C4 and C5.
They try all of those (and they can make slight modifications to the composition of each solution as well if more than one active ingredients that work together are being used) and find the one that's most effective again.
It's C2. Give the patient C2.
It should be noted what needs to be compared is how harmful C2 is to the disease to how harmful it is to your native cells.
It should also be noted that you are in a race against time, it takes more time to discover that C2 is a better treatment than C but, in the meantime, the disease is still progressing. Doctors may give the patient C until they discover that C2 is a better treatment but subjecting the patient to C before C2 might give the disease time to immune to C which could give the disease some immunity to C2 by the time C2 does arrive (allowing the disease to further immune to C2).
The problem is that C2 is not FDA approved. Only C is FDA approved. So while C2 may be a better solution for this specific patient's condition since C2 is not approved, and approval takes years and costs a ton of money, the patient may only be able to receive C.
Much of that may have to do with patents? Trying to mix multiple drugs together might require obtaining multiple licenses which is expensive. Also the way the FDA approval process is structured makes it difficult as well. The FDA likes to approve compounds individually and it may not like the idea of approving a compound to be used with another compound.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:15PM (4 children)
More neo-Confederate anti-science click-bait? What next, a ban on abortion? And on Memory Day!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 27 2019, @06:54PM (3 children)
Neo-Greek science, maybe. The Greeks had brain surgeons. There are suggestions that the Egyptians had comparable skills. They did that, and more, long before modern corporate medicine was invented. Mankind survived, somehow, without modern chemical drugs, didn't they?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)
Don't mention the Greeks. They surviving one has been nuttier than usual lately.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @07:05PM
Actually, we have more than one here. Like wheels, though, people only notice the squeaky one.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Monday May 27 2019, @09:07PM
Mankind survived, but plenty of people died from what we consider to be pretty minor infections.
Not to mention the plagues that swept though every now and again.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday May 27 2019, @06:56PM
... in the fight against germs and infections!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @07:14PM
It's like being nazis to use things that grew in the south during the civil war.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday May 28 2019, @02:00AM
See https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/best-medicine [wnycstudios.org]
Or download link https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast15staphretreat.mp3 [podtrac.com]
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.