New research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, (April 15-18) has identified several gold-based compounds with the potential to treat multidrug-resistant “superbugs.”
New research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark, (April 15-18) has identified several gold-based compounds with the potential to treat multidrug-resistant “superbugs.”
With all 19 compounds tested effective against at least one hard-to-treat bacterium and some effective against several, the Spanish researchers say that the gold-based drugs hold great potential as new antibiotics.
Drug-resistant infections kill an estimated 700,000 people a year globally and, with the figure projected to rise to 10 million by 2050 if no action is taken, the World Health Organization (WHO) classes antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest public health threats facing humanity.
However, the development of new antibiotics has stalled and the few new antibiotics that are developed are mainly derivatives of existing treatments.
Gold is known to have antibacterial properties, making gold metalloantibiotics—compounds with a gold ion at their core—an exciting potential new approach.
