New Delhi (The Hawk): Government is aware about the challenges posed by anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in India and has taken following measures to address the issue:AMR surveillance network has been strengthened by establishing labs in State Medical College. 36 sites in 26 States/UTs have been included in this network so far.National action plan on containment of Antimicrobial Resistance (NAP-AMR) focusing on One Health approach was launched in April 2017 with the aim of involving various stakeholder ministries/departments. Delhi Declaration on AMR– an inter-ministerial consensus was signed by the ministers of the concerned ministries pledging their support in AMR containment.AMR Surveillance Network: ICMR has established AMR surveillance and research network (AMRSN) comprising 30 tertiary care hospitals, both private and government to generate evidence and capture trends and patterns of drug resistant infections in the country.AMR Research &amp; International Collaboration: ICMR has taken initiatives to develop new drugs /medicines through international collaborations in order to strengthen medical research in AMR.ICMR along with Research Council of Norway (RCN) initiated a joint call for research in antimicrobial resistance in 2017.ICMR along with Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany has a joint Indo-German collaboration for research on AMR.Government of India has taken following initiatives to increase awareness about antibiotics misuse:ICMR has initiated antibiotic stewardship program (AMSP) on a pilot project basis in 20 tertiary care hospitals across India to control misuse and overuse of antibiotics in hospital wards and ICUs.DCGI has banned 40 fixed dose combinations (FDCs) which were found inappropriate.ICMR worked in collaboration with Indian Council of Agriculture Research, Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries and the DCGI to ban use of Colistin as growth promoter in animal feed in poultry.Various IEC activities like public conclave, poster and quiz competitions have been conducted by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in schools, colleges and Health melas to create awareness about AMR, its containment &amp; prevention and judicial use of antibiotics among the common public.To raise awareness among the community and the health care providers, communication material includes posters, videos and radio jingles has been developed with emphasis on prevention of irrational use of antibiotics during viral-illnesses and also on infection prevention through hand hygiene to prevent spread of infections.The Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar stated this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

 Government is aware about the challenges posed by anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in India and has taken following measures to address the issue:AMR surveillance network has been strengthened by establishing labs in State Medical College. 36 sites in 26 States/UTs have been included in this network so far.

Measures Taken To Address Challenges Posed By Anti-Microbial Resistance In India 

Washington: A research team shows in a new study how leaf beetles could successfully use new and previously indigestible food sources in the course of evolution. The insects acquired enzymes from microorganisms via horizontal gene transfer that enabled them to degrade pectins, solid components of the plant cell wall. Since the degradation products resulting from pectin digestion are not per se crucial for the growth and development of the beetles, the researchers conclude that the beetles disrupt the cell wall to access the protein-rich cytoplasm of plant cells, which they need for their nutrition.
Fossil findings of insect feeding damage on plants are evidence that insects have been using plants as a food source for more than 400 million years. Researchers led by Roy Kirsch and Yannick Pauchet from the Department of Insect Symbiosis are investigating how herbivorous insects are able to break down the hard-to-digest components of their plant food in the first place. In earlier work, they had already shown that pectin-degrading enzymes are widespread in herbivorous beetle species. They were also able to demonstrate that these beetle enzymes were invariably of microbial origin. The question of the current study was therefore how important these enzymes are for the nutrition and fitness of the insect, in this case the mustard leaf beetle Phaedon cochleariae.
"Our goal was to better understand how herbivorous insects deal with the plant cell wall, which makes the bulk of their diet. Pectin is the matrix embedding cellulose and hemicellulose fibers within the plant cell wall, and it is the main constituent of the cell-connecting middle lamellae. Consequently, pectin must be digested first so that cellulase and hemicellulase enzymes can access their substrates and the plant cells are finally freed from their protective cell wall. In this context, the action of pectinases, i.e. pectin-degrading enzymes, are key to efficient digestion of a leaf beetle's diet," says first author Roy Kirsch.
To study the role of the pectinases, the researchers generated beetle lines in which these enzymes were not present. This initially turned out to be more difficult than expected." "Not even a drastic reduction of pectinase activity through knockdown RNAi experiments in leaf beetle larvae was sufficient to effectively inhibit pectin digestion. We were only able to completely knock-out pectinase-encoding genes in the leaf beetles by applying CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing," says study leader Yannick Pauchet, underlining the importance of the "genetic scissors," a technology for which Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "Pectinase-null mutant" larvae generated in this way turned out to have low survival capacity. A further question now was whether the degradation products of pectin digestion would improve the survival rate of these beetles when applied orally to the beetle larvae. However, as feeding experiments showed, this was not the case. "On the one hand, this result was a bit of a surprise for us. But on the other hand, it was an important indicator that leaf beetles do not digest pectin to use its breakdown products for their own metabolism, but rather disrupt pectin, and likely other plant cell wall polysaccharides, to access the protein-rich cytoplasm of plant cells," Roy Kirsch summarizes the results.
Research in recent years, including from Yannick Pauchet's project group, has shown that the acquisition of microbial enzymes via horizontal gene transfer contributed to the abundance of leaf beetle species, but also of representatives of other insect families, such as weevils, bark beetles and stick insects. The appropriation of enzymes from other microbial organisms is like an evolutionary shortcut; in any case, it created the conditions for insects to open up pectin-rich plants as a food source in the first place. "There is perhaps some irony in the fact that pectinases probably first evolved in plants to dynamically adapt the pectin structure to the changing needs of the plant. These enzymes were then acquired by plant pathogenic microbes, which in turn donated them to herbivorous insects. Plant adaptation strategies apparently always involve risks and side effects," says Roy Kirsch.
However, there are also leaf beetle species that harbor symbiotic bacteria that produce pectinases for their hosts. So-called "knockin" experiments, in which a pectinase gene is introduced into the beetle genome using CRISPR-Cas9, are now planned to show how this new beetle trait affects not only interactions between plants and insects, but also interactions between insects and their bacterial partners. Future studies will also focus on other enzymes that do not degrade pectin but other plant cell wall components. The work of Roy Kirsch, Yannick Pauchet and their team shows that for an insect to survive on a host plant, it is not only the adaptation to plant defenses, such as toxins and feeding inhibitors and other secondary metabolites, which is crucial. The scientists rather focus on the primary metabolism, which has been neglected in research on plant-insect interactions so far. "The ability of an insect to digest these primary metabolites is equally important for the evolutionary success of herbivorous insects," says Yannick Pauchet. —ANI

A research team shows in a new study how leaf beetles could successfully use new and previously indigestible food sources in the course of evolution. 

Microbial Enzymes Are The Key To Pectin Digestion In Leaf Beetles: Research

London: Using the Wyss Institute's FcMBL broad-spectrum pathogen capture technology, researchers have redesigned the method of microbial pathogen detection in blood samples from paediatric sepsis patients.
The development allows for reliable pathogen detection with previously unheard-of sensitivity and speed, and it may greatly enhance therapeutic outcomes for paediatric and elderly patients with bloodstream infections (BSIs) and sepsis.
The research led by researchers from Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (GOSH), London and including researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and BOA Biomedical in Cambridge and the findings were published in PLoS ONE.
BSIs with various microbial pathogens can rapidly escalate to life-threatening sepsis when the body is overwhelmed by the multiplying invaders and shuts down its organs' functions. In 2017, there were 48.9 million cases and 11 million sepsis-related deaths worldwide. Importantly, almost half of all global sepsis cases occurred among children, with an estimated 20 million cases and 2.9 million global deaths in those under five years of age.
To prevent BSIs from progressing to full-blown sepsis, the infection-causing bacterial or fungal species must be identified as fast as possible. Only then can optimal pathogen-tailored antibacterial or antifungal treatments be applied in time. The conventional method used in clinical laboratories to identify the causative pathogenic species is long and laborious, requiring two time-consuming culture steps that take at least 1 to 3 days to complete.
"For all patients with sepsis, their chances of surviving dramatically shrink the longer it takes to identify the infection-causing pathogen(s) and thus, receive the most promising antimicrobial treatment," said Nigel Klein, M.D., Ph.D., pls, a Professor of Infectious Disease and Immunology at GOSH, and a senior author on the study. "At Great Ormond Street Hospital we have been working to demonstrate both the importance rapid diagnosis and the fact that with innovative approaches we can identify the causative organism in between 40 minutes and six hours. Compared to adult patients, sepsis in infants and small children progresses much faster, and therefore there is a real need for diagnostic methods that support early detection. Accurate diagnosis is even more significant due to the availability of only small blood volumes from paediatric patients which can make re-sampling challenging."
In 2020, senior authors Klein and Elaine Cloutman-Green, Ph.D., a Consultant Clinical Scientist and Infection Control Doctor at GOSH, began collaborating with Lead Staff Scientist Michael Super, Ph.D. and Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. at Harvard's Wyss Institute to solve this problem. "Based on our earlier success with FcMBL in isolating pathogens from joints as well as bovine and human blood with extraordinary efficiencies, we hypothesized that building an FcMBL-mediated pathogen capture into a modified clinical blood culture protocol could shorten the time and reduce the size of the required patient samples to yield the same results that time-consuming blood culture protocols provide," said Super.
In the pathogen identification process currently performed in clinical settings, first, blood samples are added to bottles containing liquid media in which infectious microbes, if present, are amplified to a certain density. Then, the amplified microbes are grown on solid media as isolated colonies whose constituent cells eventually can be identified with a highly sensitive, yet fast and relatively inexpensive analytical method know as MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry (MS). "Indeed, isolating the infectious microbes directly from grown liquid blood cultures using FcMBL makes them available for MALDI-TOF MS analysis much earlier," added Super.
FcMBL is the key component of a broad-spectrum pathogen capture technology. It consists of a genetically engineered human immune protein called mannose-binding lectin (MBL) that is fused to the Fc fragment of an antibody molecule to produce the resulting FcMBL protein. In this configuration, the MBL portion of FcMBL can capture more than 100 [CHECK WITH MIKE] different microbial species with high efficiency, including virtually all of the bacterial and fungal pathogens causing sepsis. FcMBL's Fc portion can be used to couple it to magnetic beads, allowing the captured pathogens to be quickly pulled out of patient samples and liquid blood cultures.
In the earlier stages of the project, the Wyss team provided purified bead-coupled FcMBL to the GOSH team, which had access to blood samples from pediatric patients at the hospital. At later stages, the sepsis and infectious disease company BOA Biomedical, co-founded by Super and Ingber to commercialize the Wyss Institute's FcMBL technology, provided the FcMBL reagent and critical expertise to the project. BOA Biomedical meanwhile developed the manufacturing capabilities for FcMBL that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US and other federal health agencies require for producing therapeutic and diagnostic products.
"Sepsis is the leading killer in hospitals, and rapidly initiating the right antibiotic saves lives. Using work originally developed at the Wyss Institute, BOA Biomedical's revolutionary FcMBL technology helps to quickly and accurately identify the pathogen causing sepsis, ushering in a new era of targeted antimicrobial therapy to help individual patients and curb society's deadly antimicrobial resistance problem," stated Mike McCurdy, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of BOA Biomedical.
In addition to using the gold standard two-step blood culture in combination with MALDI-TOF MS pathogen identification, the team also included the Bruker Corporation's MBT Sepsityper® kit as a comparison. Brought to market in 2021, the MBT Sepsityper® essentially eliminates the time-consuming second microbial culture step by lysing microbial cells from the liquid culture and spinning the fragments down in a centrifuge before analyzing them by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry analysis. Although it accelerates the overall diagnostic process, the MBT Sepsityper® methodproduces lower microbial detection rates than those obtained with the conventional culture method, which means that it may still fail to identify the infection-causing pathogen in a significant fraction of blood samples.
"Our FcMBL approach has opened up the opportunity to identify pathogenic organisms to guide treatment 24 to 48 hours earlier than would be possible using standard culture techniques. It has also enabled us to use this identification to make any ongoing culture for antibiotic sensitivities more tailored to the needs of the patient. This method isn't tied into a specific platform or manufacturer, and thus we see clear potential for it to become a new standard processing step for clinical pathogen detection," said Cloutman-Green.
"The FcMBL method identified 94.1% of microbial species found in clinical blood culture analysis with samples from 68 pediatric patients," said first author Kerry Kite, who performed her graduate work with Klein and Cloutman-Green. "We were able to identify more infectious species in positive liquid blood cultures using the FcMBL method than with the MBT Sepsityper® method (25 of 25 vs 17 of 25), and this trend was even further pronounced in the case of the common fungal pathogen Candida (24 of 24 vs 9 of 24)." Candida species account for about 5% of all cases of severe sepsis and are the fourth most common pathogen isolated from patients' bloodstreams in the United States. Not only do infections with Candida and other fungi require specific antifungal treatments, distinguishing among the various types of pathogenic fungi helps direct the appropriate antimicrobial therapy. Specifically in neonatal intensive care units, Candidainfections are a major cause of morbidity and mortality, killing as many as 40% of infants and often causing neurodevelopmental impairments in those that survive.
"By continuously adapting the powerful FcMBL pathogen capture technology to unmet and pressing diagnostic needs, such as the rapid diagnosis of sepsis in pediatric patients, we hope to profoundly alter the frequently dismal prospects of patients of all ages," said Ingber. "Our ultimate goal is to be able to accurately and even more rapidly identify pathogens directly in small samples of blood without the need for any additional microbial cultures." Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, and the Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. —ANI

 Using the Wyss Institute's FcMBL broad-spectrum pathogen capture technology, researchers have redesigned the method of microbial pathogen detection in blood samples from paediatric sepsis patients.

Researchers Find New Method Of Microbial Pathogen Detection In Patients With Blood Infections

Washington: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has become aware of the value of using sewage analyses to monitor disease development in an area. However, at DTU National Food Institute, a group of researchers has been using sewage monitoring from throughout the world since 2016 as an effective and inexpensive tool for monitoring infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.
By analysing sewage samples received by DTU from 243 cities in 101 countries between 2016 and 2019, the researchers have now mapped where in the world the occurrence of resistance genes is highest, how the genes are located, and in which types of bacteria they are found.
The results from the new metagenomic study -- which have just been published in Nature Communications -- have surprised the researchers. In fact, the study shows that the genes have appeared in many different genetic contexts and bacterial types, indicating greater transmission than the researchers had expected.
"We've found similar resistance genes in highly different bacterial types. We find it worrying when genes can pass from a very broad group of bacteria to a completely different group with which there is no resemblance. It's rare for these gene transmissions to occur over such long distances. It's a bit like very different animal species producing offspring," explains Assistant Professor Patrick Munk.
If the genes are in bacteria that don't usually make people sick -- such as lactic acid bacteria -- it's of less concern. However, if the resistance genes find their way into bacteria that are important to human health -- such as salmonella -- it's a completely different story.
"This makes it much more likely that the bacteria will actually kill people -- for example in a hospital -- because no treatment is available," emphasizes Patrick Munk.
Hotspots for transmission of resistance genes
In different places in Sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers have found the same resistance gene in a number of different bacteria.
"We interpret this to mean that we may be quite close to a transmission hotspot, where there is a gene transmission from one to another to a third bacterium. That's why we're seeing the gene in so many different contexts precisely there," Patrick Munk explains.
He adds that many of the surprising transmissions appear to occur in the Sub-Saharan Africa. These are also countries with the least developed programmes for monitoring resistance, which means that there is very little data on the resistance situation. "We risk overlooking important trends because we don't have data," he suggests, stressing that solid data is exactly what is needed to develop effective strategies for combating resistance:
"Right now, we have huge knowledge about how resistance behaves in the West and -- based on that knowledge -- we plan how to combat resistance. It now turns out that if we look at some new locations, the resistance genes may behave very differently -- presumably because they have more favourable transmission conditions. Therefore, the way in which you combat resistance must also be adjusted and tailored to the local conditions." —ANI

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has become aware of the value of using sewage analyses to monitor disease development in an area. 

Study Shows New And More Detailed World Map Of Antimicrobial Resistance

Texas: According to new research from Ghent, Belgium, intravenous treatment with MK-3402, a metallo-beta-lactamase inhibitor, can be a successful technique in combating antimicrobial resistance. The findings will be presented at ASM Microbe 2023, the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting. Antimicrobial resistance is a major threat to public health. Some bacteria are resistant to treatment because they produce the enzyme metallo-beta-lactamase, which make a certain class of antibacterial drugs called beta-lactams ineffective. MK-3402 is designed to block metallo-beta-lactamase enzymes, so that if it is administered as treatment with an antibacterial drug (and another type of blocking drug against other types of beta-lactamase enzymes made by bacteria), the antibacterial drug will still be able to work against bacteria that are otherwise resistant. Two studies were done with MK-3402 and a placebo, with different dosages and number of doses given between the studies. Neither the participants nor the study staff knew which participants were receiving the study drug or placebo. Safety was monitored by checking results of blood tests, electrocardiograms, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, breathing rate and participant-reported side effects. The blood levels of MK-3402 measured in these studies suggest that dosing three times per day should provide adequate MK-3402 blood levels to block bacterial metallo-beta-lactamase. However, larger studies are required to evaluate the safety and efficacy of MK-3402 in combination with other antibacterial agents. The studies were funded, designed, and sponsored by Merck, and took place at Drug Research Unit Ghent, a clinical trial site in Belgium. —ANI

According to new research from Ghent, Belgium, intravenous treatment with MK-3402, a metallo-beta-lactamase inhibitor

Treatment With Enzyme Inhibitor May Help Combat Antimicrobial Resistance: Research

New York: A team of US scientists, led by one of Indian-origin, has developed a new kind of surface treatment that can significantly help reduce the growth of mats of microbial or fungal growth on the International Space Station (ISS). Known as biofilms, the mats of microbial or fungal growth can clog hoses or filters in water processing systems, or potentially cause illness in people. New York Clogs in water recovery system hoses aboard the ISS have been so severe at times, the hoses had to be sent back to Earth for cleaning and refurbishing. While it isn't known whether biofilms have directly contributed to astronaut illnesses, on Earth, biofilms are associated with 65 per cent of microbial infections, and 80 per cent of chronic infections. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigated a variety of surfaces treated in different ways and exposed to a bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause infections in humans, especially in hospitals. The surfaces were incubated for three days aboard the space station, starting in 2019. The results show that textured surfaces impregnated with a lubricant were highly successful at preventing biofilm growth during their long exposure in space. The new liquid-infused surface treatment, rather than killing the microbes as when coated with certain metals or oxides, prevented them from adhering to the surface in the first place. The specific surface used was made of silicon that was etched to produce a nanoscale forest of pillars. This spiky surface is then infused with a silicon oil, which is drawn into the texture and held in place by capillary action, leaving a smooth and highly slippery surface that significantly reduces the adhesion of microbes and prevents them from forming a biofilm. On previous and current space stations, including the USSR's Mir station, Salyut 6, and Salyut 7, as well as the International Space Station, "they've seen these biofilms, and they jeopardise a variety of instruments or equipment, including space suits, recycling units, radiators, and water treatment facilities, so it's a very important problem that needed to be understood," said Kripa Varanasi, Professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. To understand, identical experiments were conducted on Earth as well as on the space station to determine the differences produced by the microgravity environment in orbit. In the terrestrial samples, biofilm formation was reduced by about 74 per cent, while the space station samples showed a reduction of about 86 per cent. Previous tests on Earth had shown that these treated surfaces could significantly reduce biofilm adhesion. When the samples from the space station were retrieved and tested, "we found that these surfaces are extremely good at preventing biofilm formation in the space station as well," said Varanasi, who is also founder of a company called LiquiGlide, which makes liquid-impregnated surfaces for containers to help their contents slide out. This is important because past work has found that microgravity can have a significant influence on biofilm morphologies, attachment behaviour, and gene expression, the researchers said. Thus, strategies that work well on Earth for biofilm mitigation may not necessarily be applicable to microgravity situations. Preventing biofilms will be especially important for future long-duration missions, such as to the moon or Mars, where the option of quickly returning fouled equipment or sick astronauts to Earth will not be available, the team said. —IANS

A team of US scientists, led by one of Indian-origin, has developed a new kind of surface treatment that can significantly

Scientists Find New Way To Prevent Microbial Or Fungal Growth In Space

Jodhpur: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur have used snake venom to develop a novel antimicrobial peptide molecule that can kill bacteria like E. coli, P. aeruginosa, K. pneumoniae, and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) — all known to create deadly infections.
Bacterial antibiotic resistance is a prevailing global menace that scientists must tackle worldwide.
Most naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides have varying hydrophobicities and charge compositions, limiting their use as human therapeutic molecules despite their potent bacteria-killing ability.
The antimicrobial peptide SP1V3_1 can therapeutically be implemented as a component of an ointment for wound disinfection and healing. It can be biocompatible based on in-vitro cytotoxicity studies.
The researchers’ main aim was to reduce toxicity of the snake venom without losing its antimicrobial property. For that, the scientists truncated the snake venom peptide and eliminated the toxic part of snake venom and further stitched helical short peptide at N-terminus (the end with a free amino group) for the smooth entry of the newly designed therapeutic inside the bacterial cell.
The invented peptide also holds the potential to be developed into a marketable pharmaceutical product, said researchers in the paper published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
“In the era of developmental stagnation of antibiotics due to the ever-increasing problem of antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial peptides are exciting leads in the development of novel biocidal agents. The invented antimicrobial peptide SP1V3_1 holds the potential to be developed into a marketable pharmaceutical product, as and when it passes the requisite trials,” said Dr. Surajit Ghosh, Professor, Department of Bioscience &amp; Bioengineering and Smart Healthcare Department, IIT Jodhpur, in a statement.
“The peptide can therapeutically be implemented as a component of an ointment (alone or in combination with other drugs/peptides) for wound disinfection and healing, as an injectable/oral drug for systemic administration, or as an aerosolised formulation to treat a wide range of respiratory bacterial pathogens,” he added.
—IANS

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur have used snake venom to develop a novel antimicrobial peptide molecule

IIT Jodhpur researchers turn to snake venom to fight antibiotic resistance

Washington DC: An international team of scientists led by University of Vienna microbiologist Alexander Loy discovered new gut bacteria that just consume taurine and produce the noxious chemical hydrogen sulphide. As a result, the researchers have improved our understanding of the microbial pathways that have intriguing health implications. This is also true for Taurinivorans muris: the bacterium protects against the illnesses Klebsiella and Salmonella. The results are currently published in Nature Communications. The gut microbiome mediates our health in a myriad of ways. One of those ways is by contributing to the levels of hydrogen sulfide – the toxic gas responsible for foul smelling farts. Having small amounts of hydrogen sulfide in the gut is a good thing; in fact, it’s essential for a number of physiological processes, and can even protect against pathogens. Hydrogen sulfide-producing microbes in the gut may help "choke out" oxygen-dependent pathogens such as Klebsiella, making it harder for them to colonize. However, excessive levels can have negative consequences and have been associated with gut inflammation and damage to the intestinal lining. Discovering the key players and processes that produce this noxious gas in our gut is a fundamental first step on the road to developing therapeutic interventions, for example, for inflammatory bowel disease. The bacterium Bilophila wadsworthia is one of the most important taurine utilizers in humans. In the current study, researchers led by Alexander Loy at CeMESS, the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science of the University of Vienna, have discovered a new genus of hydrogen sulfide-producing bacteria in the mouse intestine. "The bacterium we described has a rather unbalanced diet," explains Loy, "it specializes in consuming taurine." Taurine is a semi-essential amino acid, which we synthesize in small amounts in our liver. However, we get most of our taurine from our diets – especially meat, dairy and seafood. Like hydrogen sulfide, taurine is implicated in a smorgasbord of physiological processes. Recent studies have found a link between taurine and healthy ageing – it seems this nutrient may stave away age-related disease. In light of these findings, the discovery of a new gut microbe that feeds exclusively on taurine (aptly named Taurinivorans muris) is another piece of an exciting puzzle. "By isolating the first taurine degrader in the mouse gut, we’re one step closer to understanding how these gut microbes mediate animal and human health" explains Huimin Ye, lead author of the study. To access sufficient taurine in the gut, however, Taurinivorans muris needs the help of other gut microbes to release it from bile acids. Taurine-containing bile acids are produced in the liver and are increasingly released into the intestine during a high-fat diet to help our body digest fats. The activities of the bacteria in the intestine in turn influence the bile acid metabolism in the liver. The results of the Viennese researchers therefore also contribute to a better understanding of these complex interactions in bile acid metabolism, which has an impact on processes and diseases throughout the body. Taurine degrading microbes protect against pathogens One of the most important functions of the symbiotic microbes in the gut is to defend against pathogens. The microbiome has a versatile arsenal of protective mechanisms – and utilizing taurine to create hydrogen sulfide is one of them. "Hydrogen sulfide may suppress the oxygen-dependent metabolism of some pathogens," explains Ye. In the present study, the researchers found that Taurinivorans muris has a protective role against Klebsiella and Salmonella, two important gut pathogens. "The protective mechanism of Taurinivorans muris against pathogens may be via hydrogen sulfide but is essentially not yet fully understood" adds Alexander Loy. Taurine is one of the most important sources of hydrogen sulfide production in the gut. The study thus generates basic knowledge on the physiological interactions between the different gut microbes and their hosts, which is necessary to develop new microbiome-based therapies. —ANI

An international team of scientists led by University of Vienna microbiologist Alexander Loy discovered new gut bacteria

New Gut Microbe Produces Smelly Toxic Gas But Defends Against Pathogens: Study

Thiruvananthapuram: India ranks among countries with the highest mortality rates due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and statistics show that one child dies every nine minutes due to illnesses caused by bugs that resist antibiotics. This shocking revelation was made at a plenary session of the Global Ayurveda Festival (GAF) here on Tuesday, where experts discussed the role traditional medicines can play in overcoming the threat of AMR, which is rising in almost every part of the world, prompting WHO to declare it as one of the top health threats. Speaking on the issue, Professor Thomas Rampp from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, an expert in integrative medicine, said the US and European countries also face the threat from AMR, but the risk to countries in Asia and Latin America is bigger.

<div style="text-align:left;"><img src="https://thehawk.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/ayur1.webp" alt="Professor Thomas Rampp" style="height: auto;width: auto"/></div>
 Terming resistance to antibiotics a "new phenomenon", he recalled that resistance to Penicillin was reported in 1940, though the drug was put into use by 1928. This led to the creation of newer antibiotics to overcome that, but in the last three decades, no new antibiotics have been developed and this has aggravated the problem. Professor Rampp also said the use and overuse of antibiotics are leading to their resistance. He stated that this is not limited to the medical field, as over 80 percent of the antibiotics produced in the world are used in farms and fisheries, which inevitably enter our food chain. "The reasons for resistance to antibiotics come from the overprescribing of antibiotics, patients not finishing the treatment properly, the overuse of antibiotics in livestock and fish farming, poor infection control in hospitals, and poor sanitation," he said. Prof Rampp said traditional medicine systems like Ayurveda can contribute significantly to improving the situation, as they approach problems and work to improve immunity. This can prevent illness and stop the unnecessary use of antibiotics. He pointed out that Ayurveda has always focused on providing a balanced diet, and modern science now emphasises the importance of micro biomes in the gut region, which is essential to building up immunity. Speaking on the same issue, Subarna Roy, director of ICMR National Institute of Traditional Institute in Karnataka, said their studies showed that resistance to antibiotics is different in various areas within the Karnataka state. He warned that AMR is contributing to the rise of diseases like diphtheria in some areas of India. A network of facilities established to monitor the AMR situation in India has identified about 10 pathogens that are proving to be dangerous. He said sometimes antibiotics are prescribed even though they will not cure the disease but merely reduce the symptoms. The national health policy says alternative methods to treat infectious diseases should be considered, and this is where Ayurveda can play a vital role, said Roy. "Ayurveda practitioners are already helping the fight against AMR as they treat patients without prescribing antibiotics," he said.
—IANS

India ranks among countries with the highest mortality rates due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and statistics show that one child dies every nine minutes

Antibiotic resistance kills millions in India

Los Angeles: Wastewater-derived antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) can penetrate and initially join natural biofilms after being injected into a river, a study said. Although, they may not last long, researchers reported this week in mSphere. However, as the river's temperature rises, the frequency of invasive ARGs reduces considerably, indicating that the preexisting microbial community is removing the resistant intruders. In barely two weeks, the concentration of ARGs in river water at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) returned to its initial level. The finding suggests that rivers may offer a kind of defence against the spread of ARGs in wastewater. It was also contrary to what the researchers expected. Most ARGs in wastewater originate in human faeces and thrive at the temperature of the human body, which is higher than most waterways. The microbiologists anticipated that warm rivers would be a welcome environment. "We thought they should be rather well-adapted to higher temperatures," said microbiologist Uli Klumper, PhD, at Technische Universitat Dresden's Institute of Hydrobiology. "So if river temperatures are rising with climate change, we wanted to know if these bacteria from wastewater would have an easier time integrating with the natural biofilms." Klumper co-led the study with his PhD student Kenyum Bagra, who joined TU Dresden on a DAAD exchange fellowship from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, who led the study. The work was funded through the ANTIVERSA project by BiodivERsA, a European biodiversity organization. Klumper, Bagra and their colleagues first immersed 27 glass slides in the Lockwitzbach River, in eastern Germany, for a month. "It's relatively pristine," Klumper said. They collected the slides, which had amassed a natural biofilm from the river, and immersed them in artificial river systems at 1 of 3 temperatures. After a week, they observed that the abundance of naturally occurring ARGs increased in the warmest water, at 30 degrees Celsius. Then, they exposed all the test slides to wastewater for 1 day and monitored the abundance of ARGs, both those that occurred naturally and those from wastewater, over the next 2 weeks. The ARGs from the wastewater readily invaded the biofilm in all 3 cases, with no difference in abundance by temperature. "The introduction seems to be temperature independent," Klumper said. But that's where the similarities ended. In the warmest water, the abundance of the invasive ARGs dropped significantly over 2 weeks. By the end of the experiment, the overall level of ARGs had returned to its initial, natural abundance, and the invasive ARGs had all but vanished. In the other 2 groups, the invasive ARGs fared better. In some cooler samples, they were able to establish in the biofilm community, even at abundances far higher than the naturally occurring ARGs. Those results suggested that the competition between invasive and indigenous microbes was mediated by temperature, Klumper said. "We were really surprised." Researchers often assume that a warming world will promote pathogenic ARGs, he said, but it's likely not so straightforward. A river is a complex system, Klumper said and responds to warming in ways that are difficult to model. "It's not only one effect that's at play," he said. In addition, he noted that in their experiment, the initial sample came from a pristine river and a single exposure to wastewater, but in many cases, wastewater is constantly released. "So in those biofilms, there might be members that originated from wastewater but adapted well to that ecosystem," he said. —ANI

Wastewater-derived antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) can penetrate and initially join natural biofilms after being injected into a river

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