Many tuberculosis infections are from drug resistant strains that cannot be treated with antibiotics. Photo: 123RF
Dunedin researchers have found a way to kill drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, and the discovery could help fight other diseases too.
Tuberculosis is a deadly disease which infects millions of people each year. Many of those infections are from drug-resistant strains: forms of the disease which cannot be treated with antibiotics.
Killing about 4000 people every day, tuberculosis was the world's most deadly infectious disease until it was dethroned by Covid-19. Though it is rare in New Zealand, infecting just 300 people a year, it is disproportionately common in the nearby South-East Asia region and remains very difficult to treat.
But a new discovery from University of Otago PhD candidate Natalie Waller and senior researcher Matthew McNeil could change that. With the right combination of antibiotics, McNeil said it was possible to exploit weaknesses in previously impenetrable strains, and prevent others from becoming resistant in the first place.
"We've made two major findings," he said. "The first is that we've found new ways in which we can rapidly kill drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis."
When a pathogen became resistant to a specific antibiotic, McNeil said it would sometimes become vulnerable to another. By identifying that weakness, the disease could be killed off rapidly.
"Tuberculosis is a massive public health problem, there's approximately 10 million new cases each year globally, and about half a million are from drug-resistant strains," he said.
"They're very difficult to treat, there's limited treatment options, those that are available are often very toxic and require much longer treatment times."
McNeil said existing treatment for antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis could take up to two years, but their discovery could shorten that to a matter of weeks.
"The second [finding] is that we've got new ways in which we can combine different drugs to stop drug resistance from actually occurring," he said.
That discovery had promising implications for other drug-resistant diseases.
"Drug resistance is a big problem in other infectious diseases," McNeil said. "[It] comes in different shapes and sizes, but some of the same principles can be applied to other pathogens, and in fact other research groups are actually looking into ways we can find unique weaknesses in these."
Though promising, the idea would need thorough testing before it could be used for treatment.
"The next thing is upscaling, so going to see whether these observations we've made in the lab translate to different animal models," McNeil said.
"All going well, hopefully in the future there'll be clinical trials around this work."
