Wine to disarm nasty germs???

[Guest guest]

Wine is fine to disarm some nasty germs

August 7, 2008 By LAURAN NEERGAARD

Think of germs as gangsters. One thug lurking on a corner you might

outrun, but a dozen swaggering down the street? Yikes.

Bacteria make their own gangs, clustering quietly in the body until

there's a large enough group to begin an attack. This is the next

frontier in fighting drug-resistant superbugs.

The idea: Don't just try to kill bacteria. The bugs will always find a

way to thwart the next antibiotic.

The new goal is to disable bacteria's ability to sicken, so scientists

can throw superbugs a one-two punch. And attempts to bust up germ

gangs are leading the race to create these novel anti-infectives --

using everything from compounds in Pinot Noir to some popular

bone-building drugs.

" It's a stealth approach, " said chemist Kim Janda of the Scripps

Research Institute, who is developing a vaccine against notorious

drug-resistant staph that prevents the bacteria from ganging up.

" We're trying to find the Achilles heel in drug-resistant bacteria, "

added Redinbo of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

-- who did find one.

Redinbo's team discovered that certain osteoporosis drugs blocked one

E. coli germ from spreading antibiotic-resistance genes to another.

Interrupting this recruitment of new gangsters confused the

drug-resistant bugs enough that they committed suicide, leaving only

easy-to-treat germs behind.

All of this research is in very early stages. But Dr.

Gerberding, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

calls disarming bacteria a long-needed new approach.

Creating strategies

It is " like lasers going in to destroy certain parts of the bacteria

as opposed to a bomb that blows the whole thing up, " Gerberding told

Congress recently. These " next-generation strategies are not proven

yet, but really something that needs a lot more attention and focus. "

Indeed, despite a rise in bacteria that withstand today's best

treatments, there are few novel antibiotics under development -- and

germs have evolved such complex ways to survive antibiotics' frontal

assault that new ones eventually will wear out, too.

Hence the quest to disarm germs. Scientists are trying to disable

virulence factors, molecules that help germs worm their way into the

body, or block germ-emitted toxins.

Divide and conquer

But much of the new research centers on simply keeping germs from

clustering.

" We're finding new ways to prevent disease without killing the

microbial agent ... rather, neutralizing it somehow, " said University

of Rochester dentist Hyun Koo, who is using compounds left over from

vineyards' wine-making to bust up gooey bacteria masses known as biofilms.

Added Scripps' Janda: " If you break them up, they don't have that

strength in number. They're not going to do like a gang and beat

people up. "

Among the methods under study:

* Germs talk to each other, by sending out radar-like chemical signals

that sense when enough of their mates are lurking for them to switch

on and sicken. Scientists call this " quorum sensing. " Jam their

frequencies, and the germs won't know when they've got a quorum --

they'll just hang around harmlessly until the immune system picks them

off.

Janda's team designed a molecule that triggers the immune system to

form bloodhound-like antibodies that gobble up the communication

chemicals sent by deadly Staph aureus bacteria.

Janda injected some mice with those antibodies and others with a dummy

drug. Then he gave all the mice a lethal dose of staph. The

antibody-protected mice never got sick, while their unprotected

neighbors died within a day.

* Other times germs need only to rub shoulders with a neighbor to

start doing damage. Antibiotic-resistant E. coli snuggles up to a

still treatable germ and shoots the newcomer with DNA that will turn

it drug-resistant, too.

At UNC, Redinbo's team found the enzyme that sparks that whole process

could be blocked by bone-building osteoporosis drugs already on the

market, including one called etidronate.

When they added just a bone drug, not antibiotics, to the drinking

water of E. coli-infected mice, the rodents' bacteria levels

plummeted. Why? The resistant germs not only couldn't spread their bad

genes, they wound up committing suicide.

" This was a huge surprise, " said Redinbo, who now is testing if the

approach will work on other bacteria and is checking his hospital's

records to see if women taking osteoporosis drugs just might be less

vulnerable to hospital-spread infections.

* Then there are biofilms, where germs literally glue themselves

together under a crusty shell difficult for antibiotics to penetrate.

Rochester's Koo aims to break up cavity-causing dental plaque, the

best known biofilm, with compounds called polyphenols culled from

fermented grape skins.

A type of strep bacteria forms dental plaque, by secreting enzymes

called GTFs that in turn produces the biofilm's glue

When Koo added polyphenols to lab dishes teeming with strep, GTF

production plummeted 85 percent. The germs couldn't get sticky enough.

For the record, extracts from Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir worked best.

The approach should work against strep strains that cause pneumonia,

too, Koo said. His ultimate goal is a cavity-preventing rinse, but

much more research is required -- and Koo WARNS not to swish with wine

in the meantime. It's too acidic.

" You'll wind up with stained teeth and also erosion from the acidity, "

he said. -- Associated Press

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