Sugar Makes Antibiotic Treatment More Powerful
Excessive consumptions of sugar is certainly not good for health because it can lead to various diseases. However, this sweetener do have other benefits. A recent study found that the combination of antibiotics and sugars increase the effectiveness of antibiotic treatment.
Laboratory tests showed that glucose and fructose, a type of sugar from plant stimulates bacteria’s resistance to become more vulnerable to treatment.
“Sugar does not reduce the efficacy of drugs, but improve its performance,” said Professor James Collins from the Boston University, according to the Telegraph.
Chronic and recurrent infection often occurs when bacteria becomes metabolically active. Thus, bacteria are resistant to the effects of antibiotic use.
The resistance of bacteria often occurs every few weeks or months. Marked by a recurrence of the disease becoming more severe than ever. Bacterial resistance also potentially to spread the infection to the kidneys and other organs.
From the test against Escherichia coli (E. coli), a common cause of urinary tract infection, researchers were able to eradicate 99.9 percent of persistent bacteria in two hours. In a combination of antibiotics and sugar, sweetener acts as an active stimulant thus making the bacteria susceptible to antibiotic attack. While the use of antibiotics with no sugar, has no effect at all.
The finding which is published in the ‘Nature journal’ reveals that antibiotic treatment with sugar is also effectively to eradicate the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which causes deadly intestinal infection.
Prof. Collins is now planning to investigate whether the additives nature of sugar increases the effectiveness of a tuberculosis (TB) drug. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), TB is a chronic lung infection and contagious disease causes death of around 4,700 people every day.
“Our goal is to improve the effectiveness of existing antibiotics. Rather than creating new drugs that require lengthy and expensive process,” said another researcher, Kyle Allison.
She added that the findings potentially improve health of an infection and reduce health care costs.
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