How sugars in breast milk could kill off superbugs

BREAST milk has been found to contain antibiotics that could help in the war on drug-resistant diseases.

It has long been known to help babies fight infection, but scientists previously focused on how its proteins kill bugs.

They have now found that sugars in breast milk also have an anti-bacterial effect, which they hope to mimic in antibiotic drugs.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria infect and kill 700,000 people a year worldwide and 10,000 in Britain, making the hunt for new antibiotics a priority.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University, in the US, tested different breast milks on the bacteria called group B streptococcus.

Some sugars weakened the biofilm protecting the bacteria and other sugars killed them directly, the results published in the journal ACS Infectious Diseases showed.

Assistant professor of chemistry Steven Townsend said: ‘Our results show that these sugars have a onetwo punch. First, they sensitize the target bacteria and then they kill them. Biologists sometimes call this “synthetic lethality” and there is a major push to develop new antimicrobial drugs with this capability.’

Two proteins isolated from breast milk are also showing promise for developing antibiotics.