Bacterial warfare with own antimicrobials

real_aurgathor

Normally, antimicrobials such as antibiotics (i.e.penicillin) or sulfonamids are used against various bacteria that can sicken humans and other living critters. One big issue with antibiotics is that drug resistant strains can arise, and in turn they can render antibiotics and some other agents useless against those strains. This can be especially dangerous in healthcare settings. While studying some drug resistant strains, researchers discovered some of those strains are creating their own antimicrobial agents to kill competing strains, so that they can have exclusive access to the resources provided by the host!! 😲

Deadly bacteria have developed the ability to produce antimicrobials and wipe out competitors, scientists discover

“Our lab has a front row seat to the parade of pathogens that move through the hospital setting,” said senior author Daria Van Tyne, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine in Pitt’s Division of Infectious Diseases. “And when we took a step back and zoomed out, it quickly became apparent that big changes were afoot with one of the world’s more difficult-to-treat bacteria.”

Mills focused on vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm), so-called because it can’t be eradicated with the popular antibiotic vancomycin. VREfm kills about 40% of the people it infects and is a particular plague on immunocompromised and hospitalized patients, who are often taking antibiotics that decrease the diversity of bacteria in their microbiomes, allowing drug-resistant bacteria, such as VREfm, to thrive.

After analyzing the genomic sequences of 710 VREfm infection samples from hospitalized patients entered into EDS-HAT over a six-year time span, Mills discovered that the variety of VREfm strains had shrunk from about eight fairly evenly distributed types in 2017 to two dominant strains that began to emerge in 2018 and, by the end of 2022, were the culprit in four out of every five patient VREfm samples.

Upon closer examination, Mills found that the dominant strains had acquired the ability to produce a bacteriocin, which is an antimicrobial that bacteria use to kill or inhibit one another. They’d weaponized this new capability to destroy the other VREfm strains, giving them unfettered access to nutrients for easier reproduction.

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-deadly-bacteria-ability-antimicrobials-competitors.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-025-01958-0

IMHO, this is a very interesting finding with numerous implications.

MacLeech

real_aurgathor This sounds like the plot to a Robin Cook or Michael Crichton book.

real_aurgathor

MacLeech

Occasionally, real life can be as strange, or even stranger than fiction.

Astyanax

real_aurgathor While studying some drug resistant strains, researchers discovered some of those strains are creating their own antimicrobial agents to kill competing strains, so that they can have exclusive access to the resources provided by the host!!

Maybe we should stop washing our hands too.

https://www.cdc.gov/clean-hands/about/index.html

real_aurgathor

Or stop posting largely irrelevant rubbish.

Washing hands work on a very different principle, and germs are not likely to mimic that, or develop inheritable resistance against it.

Astyanax

real_aurgathor Washing hands work on a very different principle, and germs are not likely to mimic that, or develop inheritable resistance against it.

Get a bigger “rubbish bin”:

Antimicrobial soaps, although commonly used, may exacerbate bacterial resistance and disrupt skin microbiota, posing additional health risks and environmental hazards.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39407610/

New concerns about antibacterial products

A new study suggests that concerns about triclosan’s impact on bacterial resistance to antibiotics are well-founded. Researchers exposed bacteria to triclosan before administering antibiotics to find out whether bacterial resistance to antibiotics would increase. It did — dramatically. One in 10 bacteria exposed to triclosan managed to survive antibiotics versus one in a million bacteria that weren’t exposed to triclosan.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/are-antibacterial-products-with-triclosan-fueling-bacterial-resistance-2019080617473

HooRU

But he wasn’t talking about AB Soap.

real_aurgathor

Astyanax Get a bigger “rubbish bin”:

Big enough to hold to hold your new set of anti-microbial goal posts that even according to your links are no good? 😉

First, there were no mention of AB soaps in the CDC link – so while we can’t be 100% certain about their recommendation, unless explicitly mentioned, one should normally assume regular soap.

However, there is a “Frequent Questions About Hand Hygiene” link containing the following under “Using soap and water:”

Use plain soap and water to wash your hands. Studies have not found any added health benefit from using antibacterial soap, other than for professionals in healthcare settings. In 2016, FDA banned over-the-counter sale of antibacterial soaps that contain certain ingredients because these soaps are no better than plain soap at preventing people from getting sick and their ingredients may not be safe for long-term, daily use. Some studies have shown that using antibacterial soap may contribute to antibiotic resistance.

So AB soap is not recommended for general use by the CDC.

egeezer

In everyday life, the chemical and physical action of hand washing soaps are sufficient to disable bacterium and viruses from replicating or (with viruses)attaching to cells and breaking through to use the cells’ mitichondria to replicate. The spikes on viruses are destroyed with the mechanical and physical action of hand washing with soap.the viruses may still live, but can’t replicate without their spikes.

I never saw the advantage of following kids around with antibacterial Lysol wipes unless they were immunocompromised or if there was a contagious illness in the family.

With respect to hospital, group facilities and nursing home practices, there should be an ongoing process of evaluating the relative benefits and risks of prevention measures to determine best practices and minimize disease and infection transmission.