Tuberculosis (TB) was once thought to be totally under control, an ancient, historical disease that has been handled easily with a course of antibiotics over a few to several months.
Now, TB is making a strong comeback mostly among the less well-off financially and the more immune challenged. This TB surge's bacteria has figured out most of the current antibiotics that once dominated them. It's simply termed "multi-drug resistant tuberculosis" or MDR-TB.
So far, this TB variation plagues the less fortunate in less developed nations or immune compromised individuals. But among those actually infected, there are around a third who don't manifest symptoms but are carriers. And this multi-drug resistant TB bug is getting around.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded almost 9 million cases of TB worldwide in 2011. Of those, almost 1.5 million died. Currently, it's estimated that 650,000 people have MDR-TB. An even worse version is XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB), which has infected close to 10 percent of the MDR-TB population.
A study on drug resistant TB with a surprising result
A group of researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC stumbled upon a potential cure for both MDR-TB and XDR-TB while attempting to study the mechanics of how the TB bacterium becomes resistant to the normal protocol of first line TB antibiotics.
The study was in vitro (in glass), so they created a TB bacteria culture to see how that bacteria would resist isoniazid (INH), a premier first line TB antibiotic. Dr. William Jacobs, a PhD microbiologist, and his team had observed that isoniazid-resistant TB bacteria lacked the mycothiol molecule.
Dr. Jacobs said ",We hypothesized that TB bacteria that can't make mycothiol might contain more cysteine, an amino acid. So, we predicted that if we added isoniazid and cysteine to isoniazid-sensitive M. tuberculosis in culture, the bacteria would develop resistance. Instead, we ended up killing off the culture - something totally unexpected."
Surprised but now curious and willing to expand their study, the researchers decided to try some other experiments. Thinking the cysteine acted as a reducing agent to damage DNA via free radical oxidation, they decided to use vitamin C as a reducing agent instead of cysteine and they got the same result.
This evolved to using only vitamin C, which killed not only the normally-susceptible-to-isoniazid TB bacterium, but also the multi-drug resistant MDR-TB and XDR-TB strains, which are super resistant.
To justify human trials (in vivo) with vitamin C for multi-drug resistant TB, the researchers embarked on determining the molecular reasons of why vitamin C handled the petri dish bacterium.
After further research, it was determined that vitamin C caused iron to react with other molecules, creating a reactive oxygen type that was too much to handle for the MDR-TB and XDR-TB strains, which normally withstand antibiotics. They also discovered that TB couldn't develop a resistance to vitamin C.
"We ... now have a rational basis for doing a clinical trial," Dr. Jacobs said conclusively. "[V]itamin C is inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use. At the very least, this work shows us a new mechanism that we can exploit to attack TB."
Vitamin C is widely available, but it's unlikely that the AMA and Big Pharma will allow its use. Instead, they may use Dr. Jacob's fine work uncovering the mechanics of vitamin C to create a patentable pharmaceutical TB drug.
Otherwise, it will go the way of Dr. Frederick Klenner's successful injected vitamin C work on polio before the polio vaccine's prominence.
Now, TB is making a strong comeback mostly among the less well-off financially and the more immune challenged. This TB surge's bacteria has figured out most of the current antibiotics that once dominated them. It's simply termed "multi-drug resistant tuberculosis" or MDR-TB.
So far, this TB variation plagues the less fortunate in less developed nations or immune compromised individuals. But among those actually infected, there are around a third who don't manifest symptoms but are carriers. And this multi-drug resistant TB bug is getting around.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded almost 9 million cases of TB worldwide in 2011. Of those, almost 1.5 million died. Currently, it's estimated that 650,000 people have MDR-TB. An even worse version is XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB), which has infected close to 10 percent of the MDR-TB population.
A study on drug resistant TB with a surprising result
A group of researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC stumbled upon a potential cure for both MDR-TB and XDR-TB while attempting to study the mechanics of how the TB bacterium becomes resistant to the normal protocol of first line TB antibiotics.
The study was in vitro (in glass), so they created a TB bacteria culture to see how that bacteria would resist isoniazid (INH), a premier first line TB antibiotic. Dr. William Jacobs, a PhD microbiologist, and his team had observed that isoniazid-resistant TB bacteria lacked the mycothiol molecule.
Dr. Jacobs said ",We hypothesized that TB bacteria that can't make mycothiol might contain more cysteine, an amino acid. So, we predicted that if we added isoniazid and cysteine to isoniazid-sensitive M. tuberculosis in culture, the bacteria would develop resistance. Instead, we ended up killing off the culture - something totally unexpected."
Surprised but now curious and willing to expand their study, the researchers decided to try some other experiments. Thinking the cysteine acted as a reducing agent to damage DNA via free radical oxidation, they decided to use vitamin C as a reducing agent instead of cysteine and they got the same result.
This evolved to using only vitamin C, which killed not only the normally-susceptible-to-isoniazid TB bacterium, but also the multi-drug resistant MDR-TB and XDR-TB strains, which are super resistant.
To justify human trials (in vivo) with vitamin C for multi-drug resistant TB, the researchers embarked on determining the molecular reasons of why vitamin C handled the petri dish bacterium.
After further research, it was determined that vitamin C caused iron to react with other molecules, creating a reactive oxygen type that was too much to handle for the MDR-TB and XDR-TB strains, which normally withstand antibiotics. They also discovered that TB couldn't develop a resistance to vitamin C.
"We ... now have a rational basis for doing a clinical trial," Dr. Jacobs said conclusively. "[V]itamin C is inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use. At the very least, this work shows us a new mechanism that we can exploit to attack TB."
Vitamin C is widely available, but it's unlikely that the AMA and Big Pharma will allow its use. Instead, they may use Dr. Jacob's fine work uncovering the mechanics of vitamin C to create a patentable pharmaceutical TB drug.
Otherwise, it will go the way of Dr. Frederick Klenner's successful injected vitamin C work on polio before the polio vaccine's prominence.
