ANTIBIOTICS are far from subtle. Instead of wiping out only disease-causing microbes, they regularly kill 鈥渇riendly鈥� bacteria too. But popping an enzyme pill could protect the good bacteria while leaving the rest for dead.
Billions of useful bacteria colonise our guts, but because antibiotics are lethal to a whole range of microbes, drugs taken for a chest infection, for example, kill off friendly bacteria too. In most people, this will cause nothing more than a bout of diarrhoea. But others can get severe infections because killing the good bacteria lets dangerous microbes gain a foothold.
Now, Curtis Donskey at the University Hospitals of Cleveland and scientists at IPSAT Therapies in Finland, have developed a way to ensure that antibiotics only destroy bacteria where necessary. They have developed a pill containing the enzyme beta-lactamase. This breaks down a common group of antibiotics known as beta-lactams.
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The team tested the enzyme by injecting mice with an antibiotic and giving half the mice the enzyme pill as well. Harmful Enterococcus bacteria rapidly colonised the guts of the mice that didn鈥檛 receive the enzyme.
But because most antibiotics are taken by mouth, IPSAT scientists had to find a way to ensure the enzyme could be taken with oral antibiotics without instantly breaking them down. To do this, they gave the enzyme pill a soluble coating that renders it ineffective until it reaches the lower intestine. Since most antibiotic is absorbed in the upper intestine, this gives the antibiotic time to get into the bloodstream, but protects the friendly gut bacteria in the lower intestine from any drug that reaches them.
