Breakthroughs Today

As microbes start to learn defying the science behind antimicrobials, more superbugs are noted more and more. Let's look on what happens with superbug 'Streptococcus aureus.' THIS minute, “bundle of grapes-looking” bacteria naturally resides on the mucous membranes of the body and on the human skin. Staphylococcus aureus (aureus is Latin for “yellow”) is present in around a third of any human population, with 20 percent being long-term carriers of this silent menace. And it is very adaptable to antibiotic threats. Being so, it is one of the five most common causes of nosocomial infections, those diseases that we got for getting so sick and hospitalized. The first cases of resistance to penicillin, the groundbreaking discovery of Alexander Fleming in 1928, appeared in 1947 (four years after mass production started in 1943). So methicillin became the antibiotic of choice. But then reports of significant toxic effects on the kidney came out. Methicillin-resi

Despite, or perhaps because of, science mankind is now starting to gets left behind by microorganisms in this continuing war for survival. Recently the microscopic creatures apparently start to get the upper hand. Something that humans must be alarmed about.  THIS week’s article is some kind of a heads up for our Breakthroughs readers. Certain diseases lately have been reported to be getting untreatable as the scourge of antibiotic drug resistance hits hospitals abroad. In her report early this year in the Scientific American, Christine Gorman noted that health investigators “started seeing cases of infection that did not easily respond to treatment with a group of drugs called cephalosporins.” Cephalosporins are the current last line of defense against gonorrheal infection. The Feb. 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported that US doctors believed that gonorrheal infection, that the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhea cause, may soon become untreatable. And

It is something amazing to realize that boromycin, an antibiotic now relied upon to combat the so-called "Superbugs" had it roots from the poverty of the father of boron studies (organoboron chemistry). In a previous article, we mentioned boromycin as an antibiotic effective against most Gram-positive bacteria. It is however ineffective against Gram-negative bacteria, where most of many super bugs belong. Boromycin was noted as the first natural product found to contain boron. Boron is not abundant in nature, be it in the solar system or the Earth’s crust. It occurs as borate minerals, from where it is evaporated as borax or kernite. First isolation of boromycin came from Streptomyces antibioticus, a bacterial strain discovered in 1890. From these bacteria another antibiotic known as Actinomycin also came from. (G. H. Jones: Journal of Bacteriology, Dec 1987) Also known as N-formulboromycin, the antibiotic is a D-valine ester of boric acid, wrote J. D. Dunitz in a report