For the past century or so, we've been able to kill bacteria with relative ease, thanks to antibiotics. But the bugs are adapting to them, leading scientists into an arms race to keep us from being plunged back into the "dark ages of medicine." But it turns out, looking to the past might help our future – a team of researchers from Swansea University Medical School has discovered a new potential superbug killer in Irish soil, which has long been believed to have healing properties.
According to local lore, the soil in the Boho Highlands in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, could help cure what ails ya. Thousands of years ago, the soil was used to treat things like toothache and infections. These kinds of folk medicines might not get much attention in the scientific community nowadays, but with the looming threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, more researchers are investigating whether the old stories have any truth to them.
The Swansea team tested soil from the Boho Highlands area, looking for signs of the presence of Streptomyces bacteria, which are well known for producing antibiotics. And find them they did, including a brand new strain of the bug that has now been named Streptomyces sp. myrophorea.
This new strain was found to be effective at killing several pathogens on the World Health Organization's priority list. This includes carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, which is listed as critically threatening; Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), both of which are of high priority on the list; and Klebsiella pneumonia. Interestingly, this new Streptomyces strain was found to inhibit both gram positive and gram negative bacteria, with the latter generally being trickier to kill.
"The discovery of antimicrobial substances from Streptomyces sp.myrophorea will help in our search for new drugs to treat multi-resistant bacteria, the cause of many dangerous and lethal infections," says Gerry Quinn. "We will now concentrate on the purification and identification of these antibiotics. We have also discovered additional antibacterial organisms from the same soil cure which may cover a broader spectrum of multi-resistant pathogens."
The superbug problem may be alarming, with news that even our last resort antibiotics are beginning to fail, but there is hope. This Irish highlands soil joins a growing list of strange places that potential treatments have been found in recent years, with others including platypus milk, tobacco flowers, rattlesnake venom, human breast milk, honey, maple syrup, and frog skin.
The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.
Source: Swansea University via Science Daily
A classic example was trying to remove warts from my hands many years back. The mainstream idea is to freeze them off (painful, and often fails) or use treatments like salicylic acid (useless).
I gave up on mainstream medicine and looked around online, found a natural oil based remedy that killed warts by actually killing the virus (yes kids, there are natural products that can kill viruses without hurting you). It was called wartfree but it seems that wartfree is a different product now, and the original, made from a mix of essential oils, seems to have disappeared.
But, there are plenty of other examples out there, you just have to look for them.
We humans have so, so, so much more to learn about how this planet is working.
I hope to see pharma coutninuing to add value through research and testing. While at the same time getting AWAY from trying to synthetics.
Yes, many medicines have been derived from "natural" products, but, due to constraints of time, economics, are tested for short periods of time and the adverse side effects show up such that some are taken off the market after a certain percentage of them kill or maim their guinea pig takers.
The tyranny of the minority, I call it, has attacked modern medicine, such that miracle medicines, some on the market for decades, are now denied to the majority as the small minority who suffer adverse effects dictate that the majority be denied.
The solution, of course, is to find measures to determine which individuals will suffer from the medicines and which will benefit. Research is ongoing and someday will be more effective.
It is likely that more "natural" products (less altered) probably have less side effects due to other molecules in the products which modify deleterious effects.
Unfortunately, there are so many cons out there that sell their wares (should be called bewares) that the alternative medicine field is too dense a minefield for most to tread. Another big problem is that jumps from animal etc studies to human benefits are often thrown into the mix and the unsuspecting public bites on the nonsense of "clinical trials" with no real accountability or even actual citation of research when these "natural" product salesmen try to trick the consumer. THE SOLUTION: Dig as deep as you can. The field is also complicated by the nature of the soil in which the product is grown, processing, storage etc.