Combining antibiotics with drugs that do not directly kill bacteria may be one option in fighting antibiotic resistance.
The antibiotic minocycline blocks bacterial protein synthesis, but resistance has emerged in several human pathogens. Eric Brown and Gerard Wright of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and their group tested minocycline in combination with each of 1,057 approved drugs. They found 69 non-antibiotic compounds that boosted minocycline's ability to slow the growth of three bacterial species. Three of these drugs rendered multidrug-resistant clinical strains of the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa susceptible to the antibiotic.
One of the three, the anti-diarrhoeal drug loperamide, may improve the uptake of minocycline and related antibiotics by the bacteria. The two combined reduced the bacterial load in mice infected with minocycline-resistant Salmonella enterica Typhimurium.
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Antibiotics aided by other drugs. Nature 472, 392–393 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/472392e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/472392e
