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Resistance to antibiotics can be drawback for bacteria

15.01.10 

A UNIVERSITY in Sweden has found that a strain of meningitis-causing bacteria has not become resistant to antibiotics.

Neisseria meningitidis is a bacterium that can cause diseases with high fatality rates, and there has been considerable concern that, like other bacteria, it might become resistant to antibiotics.

But a study from Orebro University and Orebro University Hospital in Sweden shows that there has not been any increase in resistant meningococci in Sweden over the last 15 years.

Researcher Sara Thulin Hedberg says the reason for this may be that it is not especially advantageous for bacteria to develop resistance.

Meningococci are usually harmless bacteria, with about one in 10 people carrying them in their throats or airways without knowing it.

But they can also make their way into the blood and through the blood-brain barrier and cause blood poisoning and/or meningitis, which has a 10% fatality rate.

Hedberg found that even though some of the bacteria have become resistant to individual preparations, they have not increased in number and do not seem to be spreading in society.

She said: "We expected a more negative tendency, considering the dramatic increase in resistant bacteria in society, so these findings are both a surprise and a great relief."

Since meningococci are very good at adapting, using their ability to pick up parts of DNA from other bacteria in the same family, for instance, they have every chance of rapidly changing and developing resistance. But Hedberg's research indicates that the biological cost is too great for the bacteria. In other words, it is not a formula for success to become resistant.

When she studied meningococci that had become resistant to rifampicin, an antibiotic, she discovered that they do not multiply as rapidly and are not as good at infecting a host. They are quite simply somewhat weaker and not as good at reproducing. This means that they have a hard time competing with susceptible meningococci as soon as they find themselves in an antibiotic-free environment.

The findings from Hedberg's research may ultimately open new potential for combating resistant bacteria.

She added: "By enhancing our knowledge of how bacteria change and are affected by developing resistance it may be possible to design antibiotics that bacteria find it more difficult to adapt to without excessive cost to themselves."