Diabetes Plays a Vital Role In Antibiotic Resistance Development

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – pathogens mutations that protect them from the antibiotics' effect – is a global threat to humankind because such tendencies may lead to the emergence of pharmaceutically invulnerable bacteria, significantly increasing the potential infection's severity.

This issue has its roots in antibiotic misuse and overuse, and it is especially severe in dentistry – according to statistics, dental specialists contribute about 10% of worldwide antibiotic prescriptions.

Recently, a group of US scientists from the University of North Carolina identified a new critical factor of AMR development – diabetes mellitus. This disease affects about 530 million people worldwide, and thus, it's crucial to understand specific physiological features of their organism to prevent the aggrevating of AR.

Research details

Researchers focused on Staphylococcus aureus – the pathogen that can cause various infections, affecting skin and soft tissues. Staphylococcus is one of the leading causes of AMR, and, as scientists identified, it had a "devastating effect" on diabetics' organisms.

To find this out, researchers took two groups of mice – diabetic and non-diabetic – and infected them with the pathogen, and then tried to treat them with rifampicin – a common antibiotic. After a course of treatment, scientists obtain biological samples to check animals' organisms condition.

What did scientists discover?

As it turned out, antibiotics had no effect in the diabetic group. However, what is most important is that researchers found that the pathogen mutated and gained immunity to rifampicin — a new antibiotic-resistant generation of Staphylococcus spread across whole diabetic mice's bodies.

In the healthy group, scientists did not observe rifampicin-resistant bacteria at all, and even when researchers infected these mice with resistant bacteria – pathogens were presented only as a small population in their organisms.

How does it work?

Diabetes is a condition that disturbs an organism's ability to control glucose (type of sugar) levels in the blood. Glucose molecules, in turn, are a nutritious food for Staphylococcus that allows them to breed and evolve rapidly. Additionally, diabetes disturbs immune reaction, and thus, pathogens can reproduce without any barrier, spreading across the body because organisms can not effectively destroy these bacteria.

Why it's important?

AMR issue – is a crucial point of concern in medicine – about 40 million people could die because of this condition in the next 25 years. Thus, knowledge about its causes may help in handling the problem.

Antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus may spread from one individual to another as simply as we "exchange" flu virus or any other pathogen. Therefore, the modern healthcare industry must prevent the emergence and spreading of these microbes. In the described case of patients with diabetes, such measures may involve replacing antibiotics with other nonpharmaceutical methodologies.

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