Khaberni - Some antibiotics stop the growth of bacteria without actually killing them, which allows for the infection to return later, and to overcome the problem of their treatment evasion, scientists at the University of Basel have devised a new test that tracks these bacteria individually to identify the drugs that completely eliminate them.
When testing this method on tuberculosis and other severe lung infections, experiments revealed significant differences in how bacteria withstand treatment.
According to "Science Daily," even non-resistant bacteria may sometimes survive antibiotic treatment. This often happens when the bacteria enter a dormant state.
In this case, they stop reproducing, but the antibiotics may not kill them. Once the treatment is over, these dormant bacteria can become active again and reinfect.
This challenge is extremely dangerous, especially in diseases like tuberculosis and other complex infections, which require treatment over several months.
Therefore, choosing drugs that completely eliminate the bacteria and permanently clear the infection is crucial.
A new method for predicting treatment success
To overcome this deficiency, researchers led by Dr. Lucas Burk from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel developed a new testing method designed to improve predicting treatment outcomes in practical scenarios.
The new approach, known as the "Antimicrobial Single-Cell Assay," uses advanced microscopy to monitor millions of individual bacteria in thousands of different testing conditions.
Lucas Burk explains, "We use this technique to image each bacterium individually over several days, monitoring whether the drug actually kills them and how quickly it does so."
This technique allows researchers to precisely determine the number of bacteria that are killed by the treatment, and the efficacy of this eradication across all bacterial types.
To prove the effectiveness of this method, the team tested 65 different drug combinations against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis.
They also applied this method to bacterial samples from 400 patients suffering from other severe pulmonary infections caused by Mycobacterium abscessus, a relative of the tuberculosis pathogen.
Designing antibiotic treatments
Researchers said, "The testing method allows us to design antibiotic treatments specifically for the bacterial strains in each patient."
It suggests that a deeper understanding of the genetic factors behind antibiotic resistance could lead to faster and simpler testing methods, improving predictions about the effectiveness of new antibiotics during their development.
