JANUARY 30 • 2020 | 45
O
ne of the scariest
things about being
admitted to
the hospital is the
possibility of catch-
ing some dangerous,
drug-resistant super-
bug.
The chances of
that happening could
become slimmer with
a new discovery from Israeli
researchers, who found that
aggressive bacteria can be
controlled if treated within a
specific timeframe.
Like all living organisms,
bacteria develop defenses
against hostile elements in
their environment — in their
case, antibiotics. They can do
so by acting “tolerant”
and lying dormant
during antibiotic treat-
ment which misses
them because it only
knows how to spot and
kill growing targets.
After evading this
round of treatment,
the bacteria become resilient.
It’
s this “tolerant” stage that
Professor Nathalie Balaban
from the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and Dr. Maskit
Bar-Meir from Shaare Zedek
Medical Center have tackled,
with their findings recently
published in Science magazine.
Bearing in mind that the
tolerance stage lasts only a
few days and can’
t be detected
in standard medical labs, the
two developed a lab test that
gauges antibiotic tolerance.
This means that doctors can
now administer the correct
medication within this narrow
timeframe before resistance
sets in.
In a previous study, Balaban
developed a mathematical
model that described, mea-
sured and predicted when bac-
teria would develop tolerance
to a particular antibiotic. Now,
Balaban repeated the study
together with Bar-Meir, this
time analyzing daily bacterial
samples from hospitalized
patients with life-threatening,
persistent MRSA (methicil-
lin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus) infections.
Like in the lab, the bacteria
developed tolerance followed
by resistance, leading to the
failure of antibiotic treatment.
If medical centers adopt this
lab test, doctors could quickly
and easily detect whether a
patient’
s bacteria are tolerant
of a planned antibiotic treat-
ment before it’
s administered.
Based on the patient’
s bacteria
profile, doctors could also
handpick antibiotics with a
greater chance of success.
“Using the right combi-
nation of available antibiotic
drugs at the outset could dra-
matically increase a patient’
s
survival rate before their infec-
tion becomes tolerant to all
the antibiotics in our arsenal,”
Balaban explained.
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Israeli Doctors Take on
Life-threatening Superbugs
NAAMA BARAK ISRAEL21C.ORG
Professor Nathalie
Balaban
HEBREW UNIVERSITY