How can vanilla help contain antibiotic resistance?

Combination of vanillin and an antibiotic eliminates resistant bacteria

Increasing antibiotic resistance worldwide poses a major threat to human health. Researchers have now discovered that combining an antibiotic with vanillin, the compound that gives vanilla its flavor, could stop the spread of drug-resistant superbugs.

The scientists found in their current study that blending the drug Spectinomycin with vanillin increases the ability of the antibiotic to invade bacterial cells and prevent their growth. The physicians published the results of their study in the English-language journal "Nature".

The combination of vanillin and antibiotics could be a new effective approach against multi-drug resistant agents. (Image: rgpilch / fotolia.com)

The world is heading for a post-antibiotic era

Spectinomycin was originally used in the 1960s to treat gonorrhea until gonorrhea developed resistance to spectinomycin. Antibiotics have often been used unnecessarily by family physicians and hospital staff for decades to treat harmless bacteria, with the result that the bacteria increasingly develop resistance and become so-called super-exciters. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already warned that if nothing is done, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era.

The antibiotic crisis affects every human being

A lack of new effective drugs coupled with overdose or misuse has triggered the antibiotic crisis, which, according to the World Health Organization, potentially affects every person, regardless of age and country. Frequent infections such as chlamydia could then become deadly diseases. There would be no immediate solution to such a crisis right now, researchers say.

In the future, ten million deaths per year due to super-pathogens?

Bacteria can become drug-resistant if people take improper doses of antibiotics or if antibiotics are taken unnecessarily. Scientists predict that the resulting super-pathogens will kill ten million people each year by 2050, with those affected dying from once-harmless infectious diseases.

We need new effective antibiotics

Around 700,000 people worldwide already die of drug-resistant infections such as tuberculosis (TB) every year. Time and again concerns have been expressed that medicine will be put back into a dark age when antibiotics become ineffective. In addition to the less effective drugs, only one or two new antibiotics have been developed in the last 30 years. Without effective antibiotics, for example, cancer treatments and hip replacements are incredibly risky, experts found in a previous investigation.

Combinations increased the efficacy of antibiotics

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and Heidelberg have now exposed three different pathogenic bacterial species to nearly 3,000 drug and food additive combinations. More than 500 of the combinations increased the effectiveness of antibiotics, explain the physicians.

Combination of spectinomycin and vanillin was particularly effective

A selection of these combinations was then tested on multidrug-resistant bacteria from infected hospital patients. About the combination of spectinomycin and vanillin, the study author Dr. Ana Rita Brochado of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory: This combination was one of the most effective and promising synergies identified.

Antibiotics can cause strong side effects

Vanillin also reduces the effectiveness of other antibiotics, which could actually benefit human health. Antibiotics can cause collateral damage and side effects because they also target healthy bacteria. However, the effects of these drug combinations are very selective, study author Athanasios Typas of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory explains. In the future, drug combinations could specifically prevent the harmful effects of antibiotics on healthy bacteria. This would also reduce the development of antibiotic resistance as healthy bacteria are not put under pressure to develop antibiotic resistances that can later be transferred to dangerous bacteria, the researcher adds.

How serious is the antibiotic resistance crisis?

Despite the wide availability of antibiotics, infectious diseases remain one of the leading causes of death worldwide, say the experts. In the absence of new therapies, the mortality rate due to untreatable infections is expected to increase more than tenfold by 2050. WHO has already identified antibiotic resistance as a serious threat to any region of the world. (As)