US Antibiotics discovery a “game changer”

Scientists at the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, have used a new method to grow bacteria. This process has resulted in 25 new antibiotics, with one being called “very promising”.

The study was published in the journal ‘Nature’, and it has been described as a “game changer”. The antibiotic haul is thought to be just the “tip of the iceberg” and it has filled researchers with hope.

The 1950s and 1960s were thought to be the peak of antibiotic discovery, but this has been the first discovery since 1987 to make it to doctors’ hands.

Ever since that period, microbes have become increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics. Tubercolosis (TB), one of the world’s deadliest and most infectious diseases has become largely antibiotic resistant.  It is estimated that the disease kills a shocking 1.3 million people a year around the world, and it is only surpassed by HIV/AIDS in this respect.

The disease was originally battled using a 6-month course of antibiotics, but this age-old remedy, is no longer enough for some people. The alternative medicines proposed for these victims can often have severe side effects, including extreme nausea, vomiting, deafness, depression and psychosis, with treatment lasting around 2 years, and fewer than half of patients being successfully treated.