Cystic fibrosis sufferers are prone to a great many bacterial infections. So, researchers at Canada's McMaster University are finding creative ways of dealing with the problem, and helping to solve the increasingly problematic issue of antibiotic resistance. Drug Discovery & Development reports that they found an answer in an over-the-counter drug for diarrhea combined with minocycline, an antibiotic that treats bacterial infections.
Researcher Eric Brown and his colleagues found that the combination of these two drugs inhibits the growth of bacteria after screening a collection of previously approved non-antibiotic drugs within McMaster's Centre for Microbial Chemical Biology. Their screening revealed that this particular combination using the anti-diarrhea drug loperamide increases the efficacy of the antibiotic minocycline against multidrug resistant P. aeruginosa, DD&D reports.
"Previous advances in treating cystic fibrosis have been in managing infection, but since infectious organisms are increasingly developing resistance to antibiotics, the importance of providing new treatments is more important than ever," Brown said. He added that the fact that these drugs have already been approved should cut drug development time in half.
"These exciting research findings hold promise that a new, safer method for treating devastating lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis may be just around the corner," said Maureen Adamson, CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, which helped fund the study.
- read the report in Drug Discovery and Development