{"id":3740,"date":"2024-03-14T12:36:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T12:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/?p=3740"},"modified":"2024-03-26T12:40:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T12:40:58","slug":"steroid-drugs-used-for-hrt-can-combat-e-coli-and-mrsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/biosciences\/2024\/03\/14\/steroid-drugs-used-for-hrt-can-combat-e-coli-and-mrsa\/","title":{"rendered":"Steroid drugs used for HRT can combat E. coli and MRSA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria is a global threat to human health, and the development of new antibiotics from scratch is an extremely expensive and time-consuming process. To address this urgent issue, researchers from Kent\u2019s\u00a0School of Biosciences<\/a>\u00a0have combined computational and microbiology laboratory approaches to identify existing drugs that can be repurposed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.<\/p>\n

This research, which has been published in the\u00a0Journal of Infectious Diseases<\/em>, revealed that a class of steroid drugs currently used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can also stop the growth of antibiotic-resistant\u00a0E. coli<\/em>\u00a0and effectively kill MRSA. These drugs are particularly good at binding to a protein complex, cytochrome\u00a0bd<\/em>, which is important for the growth and survival of a range of disease-causing bacterial species. It is expected that steroids may provide an alternative to conventional antibiotics that are becoming increasingly ineffective.<\/p>\n

Dr Mark Shepherd, Reader in Microbial Biochemistry<\/a>\u00a0at Kent and the corresponding author on the paper, said: \u2018These exciting developments will help to advance research into new antimicrobials, and we are enthusiastic to use our powerful experimental approach to discover drugs that can target other bacterial proteins and combat a wide range of antibiotic-resistant infections.\u2019<\/p>\n

The article \u2018Steroid Drugs Inhibit Bacterial Respiratory Oxidases and Are Lethal Toward Methicillin-Resistant\u00a0Staphylococcus aureus<\/em>\u2019 is published in the\u00a0Journal of Infectious Diseases<\/em>\u00a0(University of Kent: Samantha A. Henry, Calum M. Webster, Mark N. Wass, Gary K. Robinson and Mark Shepherd). doi:\u00a010.1093\/infdis\/jiad540\/7603360<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Steroid<\/a>
Steroid drug binding to E. coli cytochrome bd that illustrates a new \u2018drug repurposing\u2019 approach to combat bacterial infections.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n