University of Oregon
University of Oregon researchers have tested a new combination drug therapy that could dismantle the difficult-to-treat bacteria inhabiting chronic wound infections.
Their findings, published Sept. 29 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, illuminate ways to develop more effective antimicrobial treatments that promote healing in chronic wounds. Such treatments also could help reduce the risk of severe infections that sometimes lead to amputations, such as diabetic foot ulcers.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the approach pairs long-known substances that do little on their own against hard-to-treat pathogens festering in chronic wounds, namely the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. But by adding small doses of a simple molecule called chlorate to standard antibiotics, the combination proved 10,000 times more effective at killing bacterial cells in the lab than single-drug antibiotics. That kind of potency reduced the dose of medication required to kill P. aeruginosa…