Could turmeric help solve the superbug threat?
Researchers around the globe are scrambling to find ways to tackle the superbug crisis. Now, scientists have found an interesting way to foil a common antibiotic resistant bacteria, using turmeric.
Superbugs are very difficult to kill. The most common of these bacteria is Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), which infects 24-79% of the world's population at any given time.
Like other superbugs, H. pylori has grown ever more resistant to traditional cures using antibiotics.
Indeed, drug resistant bacteria are one of the biggest threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Some experts predict that it will cause more deaths than cancer by 2050 unless scientists can find some way to counter it, and soon.
However, scientists from the United Kingdom and Germany may have found an innovative way of treating H. pylori without using antibiotics. Instead, they used minuscule capsules filled with natural ingredients, notably curcumin, to help antibiotics do their work more effectively. Curcumin, which is an ingredient in turmeric, has anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor qualities.
"[H. pylori] is a globally-spread pathogen. It is estimated that up to 70% of people host this pathogen worldwide," says professor Francisco Goycoolea of the School of Food Science and Nutrition in Leeds in the UK, and co-author of the paper that the team recently published in the journal ACS Applied Bio Materials.
Goycoolea adds that scientists need to find 'new integral approaches [...] to tackle antimicrobial resistance," and must try to find new alternatives to antibiotics.
He believes that "this novel formulation, consisting of small capsules made of natural ingredients, could offer a new means to deter a globally-spread 'superbug' pathogen.".
In 2017, the WHO included H. pylori as a high priority pathogen on their list of drug resistant bacteria that present the biggest threat to global health — the superbugs that need the most immediate solutions.
Resistance occurs because bacteria change and adapt, meaning that antibiotics can no longer cure bacterial infections. Although resistance does happen naturally, the inappropriate use of antibiotics to cure colds, for example, has exacerbated the situation.
At the moment, doctors treat superbugs with a cocktail of antibiotics, which has only served to encourage resistant strains,
Natural ingredients help fight the superbug
Estimates suggest that 4.4 billion people globally carry H. pylori. It does not always show symptoms, although it can result in ulcers, inflammation of the lining of the stomach, and an increased risk of stomach cancer. Doctors find H. pylori very challenging to treat.
"The bacteria hide under the gastric mucous layer where antibiotics do not penetrate effectively. This often leads to recurrent infections and gives rise to resistant strains," says Goycoolea.
Now the research team, based at the universities of Leeds in the UK, and Münster and Erlangen in Germany, has discovered that billions of minute nanocapsules loaded with curcumin and used in the right dose, can stop the bacteria from sticking to stomach cells. This is turn, helps antibiotics do their jobs.
This novel solution uses nontoxic food and pharmaceutical-grade ingredients. The scientists coated the nanocapsules with the enzyme lysozyme, which helps to fight bacterial infections. The scientists also used a small amount dextran sulfate "that binds receptors in the bacteria and in the mucosal layer that coats the stomach."
"Small capsules made of natural ingredients could offer a new means to deter a globally-spread 'superbug' pathogen," says Goycoolea.
The scientists carried out the research in vitro, or outside the human body, using stomach cells and the bacteria.
"A new generation of antibacterials might be based on more specific molecular targets of the bacteria, acting probably not as broad as the older compounds, but therefore more precisely against specific virulence factors of specific bacteria," says co-author professor Andreas Hensel of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology and Phytochemistry at the University of Münster.
