A protein in breast milk significantly reduces resistance to antibiotics developed by some pathogens that cause severe pneumonia and other difficult-to-treat infections. This is what reveals a study published Wednesday in the American journal “PLoS ONE”.
This discovery holds promise for hospitals. They are often confronted with the problem of antibiotic resistant “superbugs”, such as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), responsible for a large number of nosocomial infections.
Experiments conducted in laboratory cultures and in animals have shown that this protein, called “Human Alpha-lactalbumine made lethal to tumor cell”, or HAMLET, increases the sensitivity of bacteria to multiple antibiotics such as penicillin and erythromycin.
The effects were so pronounced that resistant bacteria including penicillin, such as streptococcus pneumoniae and MRSA, regained sensitivity to these antibiotics to which they had previously been resistant, explain the researchers, whose Anders Hakansson, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Buffalo, one of the three co-authors of this research.
HAMLET “has the potential to reduce the concentration of antibiotic needed to fight infections and allows us to use the most common antibiotics against resistant pathogens,” said Anders Hakansson.
Targeted use against tumors
Bacteria seem to have great difficulty developing resistance to HAMLET. They die in large numbers even after they have been exposed to this protein for many generations, he added.
“Unlike synthetic treatments, HAMLET is a substance that forms naturally in human milk and has no toxic side effects, which are often seen with very strong antibiotics needed to kill multidrug-resistant pathogens,” notes the researcher.
HAMLET has also been researched for its targeted use against cancerous tumors, especially those resistant to other types of chemotherapy.
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