‘ Combining 4 or 5 antibiotics effectively kill harmful bacteria’

Los Angeles, Sept. 3: Scientists say they have discovered thousands of four- and five- drug combinations of antibiotics that are more effective at killing harmful bacteria than thought.

The findings, published in the journal npj Systems Biology and Applications, could be a major step towards protecting public health at a time when pathogens and common infections are increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics.

“There is a tradition of using just one drug, maybe two,” said Pamela Yeh, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA) in the US.

“We are offering an alternative that looks very promising. We shouldn't limit ourselves to just single drugs or two- drug combinations in our medical toolbox.

“We expect several of these combinations, or more, will work much better than existing antibiotics,” said Yeh.

Working with eight

◗ Working with eight antibiotics, researchers analysed how every four- and five- drug combination worked against E coli

antibiotics, the researchers analysed how every possible fourand five- drug combination, including many with varying dosages — a total of 18,278 combinations in all — worked against E coli.

They expected that some of the combinations would be very effective at killing the bacteria, but they were startled by how many potent combinations they discovered.

For every combination they tested, the researchers first predicted how effective they thought it would be in stopping the growth of E coli.

Among the four- drug combinations, there were 1,676 groupings that performed better than they expected.