Damian Sendler: Pre-resistance to antibiotics has been detected for the first time in bacteria by researchers at UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital, according to a study published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. 

Damian Sendler

Doctors will be able to choose the optimal treatment for bacterial illnesses in the future because to the discoveries published in Nature Communications. 

Damian Jacob Sendler: More than 3,000 tuberculosis samples were sequenced by a team directed by Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, in partnership with the Peruvian Tuberculosis program and sponsored by Wellcome and the National Institutes of Health (USA). 

As the name suggests, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) is an infection of the lungs caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2020, it was the second most common infectious cause of mortality, accounting for 1.5 million deaths. Antibiotic treatment can cure it, but it takes a long time and many of those at risk don’t have access to it. It is possible for persons to develop drug-resistant tuberculosis if they do not complete their therapy or if the medications are either in short supply or of poor quality. 

There is a tremendous, unsustainable burden of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in a few countries, and some of these strains are completely drug resistant. There has been a slowdown in TB treatment around the world because of the pandemic. 

Researchers have discovered for the first time how to prevent drug resistance mutations before they emerge in order to better understand and treat tuberculosis (TB). They call this phenomenon “pre-resistance,” which is when a disease-causing organism is more likely to acquire a resistance to medications in the future. 

Studying millions of bacterial genomes has the potential to be extended to other infectious diseases and pave the way for personalized pathogen “genomic therapy,” where medications are selected for specific pathogens, avoiding drug resistance from forming. 

Damian Jacob Sendler

Over the course of 17 years, Dr. Louis Grandjean, GOSH Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Associate Professor at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, has led a study group in Lima’s suburbs. 

To build a phylogenetic tree of tuberculosis bacteria, an international team of researchers examined 3,135 different samples of tuberculosis bacterium. Using computer research, the team was able to determine the ancestral genetic code of bacteria that went on to develop antibiotic resistance. The researchers looked at the ‘branches’ of the family tree to identify which ones were most likely to acquire drug resistance, and found the most important modifications. 

Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: TB genome differences suggested that a particular branch of the disease was likely to become medication resistant, and the conclusions were confirmed in an independent worldwide TB data set by the authors of this paper. 

Damien Sendler: An international team led by Dr. Grandjean concluded: “We’re running out of options in antibiotics and the options we have are often hazardous – we have to grow wiser at using what we have to prevent medication resistance. 

We have shown for the first time that we can outpace drug resistance. Our ability to use pathogen genomes to choose the most effective medicines will be enhanced in the future.

Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.