A US team has developed an unconventional treatment strategy for bacterial infections, which uses gallium to destroy bacterial metabolism and reduce bacterial survival. The strategy may be promising as a new treatment for bacterial infections, the researchers said.

    Before the invention of antibiotics, metals such as copper and mercury were often used as antimicrobial agents because they were toxic to a variety of bacteria. This time, the research team composed of researchers from Washington University, Johns Hopkins University and other institutions once again developed the antibacterial potential of metals, using gallium as an antibacterial agent against pathogenic bacteria of lung infection. They published a paper in the Journal of scientific translational medicine on the 26th, pointing out that when the metal gallium is absorbed by bacteria, it can replace iron, thus destroying the iron metabolism of bacteria and reducing the survival rate of bacteria.

    Gallium can inhibit the key iron dependent bacterial enzymes and increase the bacterial sensitivity to oxidants. In addition, gallium resistance develops slowly, its activity has synergistic effect with some antibiotics, and gallium does not reduce the antibacterial activity of host macrophages.

    The research team verified the antibacterial activity of gallium through mouse models and clinical trials. Mouse model studies showed that intravenous gallium could reduce the number of bacteria in mice infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and improve the survival rate of mice. However, phase 1 clinical trials in patients with cystic fibrosis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa respiratory tract infection showed that systemic gallium treatment could improve lung function of patients without serious adverse reactions.

    The lack of new antibiotics has become one of the major challenges facing the medical community. Their new research raises the possibility of treating human infections with iron metabolism or other nutritional weaknesses of bacterial pathogens, which is expected to become a new treatment for bacterial infections.

    New antibiotics are needed to curb the increasing trend of drug-resistant infections. But many mainstream antibiotics are no longer available, and people have to constantly discover new antibiotics to keep "ahead" of the bacteria. But the more scientists study, the more they discover that there are almost no new antibiotics - only a very small number of them have been developed in the past 30 years. However, American scientists are not following the usual path and using gallium to fight bacterial infection is likely to provide a potential solution to this dilemma.

Source: Science and Technology Daily