According to a new study, Antibiotics may make the "Superbug" MRSA stronger which can eventually lead to a worse infection.
In a new research published in the Host & Microbe Journal Cell, scientists found out that the MRSA bacteria actually adapts to a beta-lactam antibiotics making the bacteria stronger as the process goes.
The study was conducted by studying the behavior of mice. According to the researchers, those mice that were infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus were not actually medicated by the use of beta-lactam antibiotics. Instead, the mice got sicker as researchers treated them with the said drug.
Specifically, one enzyme of MRSA called PBP2A was found immune even though the said infection was exposed to antibiotics.
This means that the very common antibiotics used to treat the said infection is immune to the said medicine and thus making the MRSA infection more powerful.
Dr. George Liu explained the result of the study.
"Our findings underscore the urgent need to improve awareness of MRSA and rapidly diagnose these infections to avoid prescribing antibiotics that could put patients' lives at risk," stated by the co-author of the study, which is also a researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Through the decades, MRSA has become one of the most difficult to medicate microbes. According to the statistics of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 80,000 total infections and 11,000 deaths per year which were caused by the MRSA.
The new study is said to offer tough challenges to scientists as they found out that they are treating MRSA patients with wrong medicines. As what Dr. Liu said, 30 to 80 percent of patients who have moderate or severe MRSA infections were treated with the wrong antibiotics.
Although the study offers consistent results, the researchers said that clinical trials must be done also to humans to ensure the proper treatments needed.
