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looks like they may have just broken MRSA

From superbug to… bug. Newly discovered chemical compounds can make MRSA bacteria vulnerable to the antibiotics they normally resist, restoring the old drug’s former powers.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus, commonly known as MRSA, is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections, and the second biggest cause of death by drug-resistant bacteria in the US. These bacteria are resistant to the most widely used class of antibiotics, called beta-lactams, which include penicillin, methicillin and carbapenems.

These drugs work by targeting essential components of a bacterium’s cell wall called peptidoglycans. But MRSA protects itself by using a type of molecule that can soak up the drug and stop it from working.

Now Christopher Tan and colleagues at Merck Research Laboratories in New Jersey have found a way to break this resistance. They have identified two compounds that make beta-lactam antibiotics powerful against MRSA again.

Called tarocin A and tarocin B, these compounds target a different part of a bacterium’s cell wall, called teichoic acid. Neither of these drugs kill bacteria on their own, but when either one is combined with an antibiotic, the combination can kill MRSA in both clinical samples and in infected mice. The compounds haven’t yet been tested in humans.

“It’s like a two-prong attack,” says David Brown, of the charity Antibiotic Research UK. “They’re weakening the wall by a second mechanism, which makes it easier for the beta-lactams to have their effect as well.”

more https://www.newscientist.com/article/2080180-mrsa-superbugs-resistance-to-antibiotics-is-broken/

not good

For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean "the end of the road" for antibiotics.

The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Defense Department researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery "heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria."

more https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/