These Bacteria Kill Bugs That Are Drug Resistant

Predatory bacteria – that eat others of their kind – could be a new weapon in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria or ‘superbug’, a new study suggests. A naturally occurring predatory bacterium is able to work with the immune system to clear multi-drug resistant Shigella infections in zebra-fish, researchers from Imperial College of London and Nottingham University in the UK said. It is the first time the predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorous has been successfully used as an injected anti-bacterial therapy and represents an important step in the fight against drug-resistant infections, or ‘superbugs’. Shigella infection is responsible for over 160 million illnesses and over one million deaths every year – and is a common cause of travelers’ diarrhea. Cases of drug-resistant Shigella are also on the rise as, although the diarrhea usually clears up without treatment, antibiotics are often used even in mild cases to stop the diarrhea faster. To investigate Bdellovibrio’s ability to control drug resistant Gram-negative infections, researchers injected zebra-fish larvae with a lethal dose of Shigella flexneri strain M90T, resistant to antibiotics. Bdellovibrio was injected into the larvae’s infection site and a decrease in the number of Shigella was seen. In the absence of Bdellovibrio, zebra-fish Shigella numbers rose.