Spot the germs
Dyed antibiotics come into the fight against bacteria
Life expectancy is increasing, and the number of people in fragile health, with weakened immunity, especially susceptible to bacterial infections, is also growing. The problem of antibiotic resistance is also gaining momentum. Bacterial infections bring especially a lot of harm when installing various kinds of implants, endoprostheses, when fixing fractures with plates, spokes and screws. According to some reports, when fixing fractures, infection with bacteria occurs in about 5% of cases. If the fracture is open, the probability increases to 30%. Such an infection is quite difficult to detect and confirm by non-invasive methods. It is even more difficult to determine which bacteria caused it, and which antibiotics should be treated.
In order to make it easier to detect an infection, Dutch scientists combined the antibiotic vancomycin with a fluorescent dye. The principle of action of the antibiotic is that it is embedded in the cell wall of the bacterium and does not allow it to be synthesized further. Without this, the bacterium cannot divide, because it cannot synthesize the cell wall into two new bacteria. Vancomycin is effective against staphylococci, steptococci and some other bacteria. Fluorescent dyes are arranged as follows: they absorb light with one wavelength, and then emit with another. This emitted light can be easily detected by special devices, even if its source is inside the body.
When fluorescent vancomycin is administered in small, non-lethal doses for bacteria, it is embedded in the bacterial wall and glows there. If there are no bacteria in the body, then it does not linger anywhere and is excreted from the body. You can also combine other antibiotics with other fluorescent dyes in the same way. This will allow us to find out relatively quickly and non-invasively which antibiotic is effective against these specific bacteria. Fluorescent vancomycin has performed well in experiments on mice and human corpses. The signal level was sufficient to observe it from the surface of the body.
Computer tomograms of a live mouse with a luminous antibiotic injected (a picture from an article in Nature Communications
Real-time in vivo imaging of invasive- and biomaterial-associated bacterial infections using fluorescently labelled vancomycin)
However, it remains unclear whether the drug will shine brightly enough if the number of bacteria is very small. But since the safety of human use has long been demonstrated for both components, and the problem is acute, it can be assumed that the method will soon reach the clinic.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.10.2013