Now, Lewis’s team has found that a compound called hygromycin A is completely harmless to animals and has little effect on most bacteria, but is extremely deadly to spirochaete bacteria such as B. burgdorferi.
Spirochaete bacteria have a corkscrew shape that enables them to burrow into tissues. They also cause diseases such as syphilis, says Lewis. “They are pretty nasty pathogens.”
In animal tests, the team didn’t observe any harmful effects of hygromycin no matter how high the dose. “It is unusually safe,” says Lewis.
By contrast [to antibiotics given for Lyme], Lewis’s studies suggest it is extremely difficult for B. burgdorferi to evolve resistance to hygromycin. The chemical resembles essential nutrients that spirochaetes cannot make themselves and take up using a specific transporter, so mutations that block the take-up of hygromycin would also deprive spirochaetes of these nutrients.
> Now, Lewis’s team has found that a compound called hygromycin A is completely harmless to animals and has little effect on most bacteria, but is extremely deadly to spirochaete bacteria such as B. burgdorferi.
>
> Spirochaete bacteria have a corkscrew shape that enables them to burrow into tissues. They also cause diseases such as syphilis, says Lewis. “They are pretty nasty pathogens.”
>
> In animal tests, the team didn’t observe any harmful effects of hygromycin no matter how high the dose. “It is unusually safe,” says Lewis.
>
> By contrast [to antibiotics given for Lyme], Lewis’s studies suggest it is extremely difficult for B. burgdorferi to evolve resistance to hygromycin. The chemical resembles essential nutrients that spirochaetes cannot make themselves and take up using a specific transporter, so mutations that block the take-up of hygromycin would also deprive spirochaetes of these nutrients.
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