A new model shows that combining antibiotics with enzymes improved the removal of tough biofilms in VAP, a finding that could lead to more effective treatments.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Enhanced Treatment: Researchers have discovered that combining antibiotics with enzymes improves the effectiveness of treating ventilator-associated pneumonia by better targeting and breaking down the protective biofilms on breathing tubes.
- Biofilm Challenge: The study found that the biofilms formed in their new model were more complex and resistant, similar to those in real patients, highlighting the difficulty of treating VAP with antibiotics alone.
- Potential for New Therapies: The findings suggest that this enzyme-antibiotic combination could lead to the development of new, more effective therapies for patients suffering from ventilator-associated pneumonia, a condition that affects up to 40% of ventilated patients and is often fatal.
Scientists at The University of Warwick have developed a new model that could lead to better treatments for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a common infection in patients on mechanical ventilators, particularly for those with existing respiratory conditions like COVID-19.
VAP is transmitted by germs that stick to the breathing tubes, which are often resistant to antibiotics. Up to 40% of ventilated patients in intensive care wards will develop VAP, with 10% of those patients dying as a result.
In a recent study, published in Microbiology, researchers recreated hospital conditions to improve understanding of the infection.
They used the same type of tubes that go into patients’ airways and created a special mucus to simulate the conditions inside a human body. Bacteria and fungi formed a slimy layer called a biofilm on these tubes.
Study Findings
“Our study found that the biofilms in our model were different and more complex than those usually grown in standard lab conditions, making them more realistic,” says Dr Dean Walsh, research fellow at the University of Warwick, in a release. “The biofilms formed in this new model were very tough to get rid of, even with strong antibiotics, much like what happens in real patients.
“Significantly, when we combined antibiotics with enzymes that break down the biofilm’s protective slime layer, the biofilms were more successfully removed than with antibiotics alone. With the enzymes, we could halve the concentration of antibiotics needed to kill the biofilms. So, that suggests we can use our model to identify new VAP treatments that attack the slime layer.”
Model Can Help Develop Better Therapies
Dr Freya Harrison in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, adds in a release, “VAP is a killer, and there are currently no cost-effective ways of making the tubes harder for microbes to colonize. Our new model can help scientists develop better therapies and design special tubes that prevent biofilms, which could improve the health of patients on ventilators.”
This project was part of an international research program in antimicrobial resistance that brings together colleagues at the University of Warwick with those at Monash University in Melbourne and is supported by the Monash-Warwick Alliance.
Professor Ana Traven, PhD, co-director of the Monash-Warwick Alliance program in emerging superbug threats and co-author of the study, says in a release, “It is exciting that we could join forces with our colleagues at Warwick for this important study. Many promising new anti-infectives fail because experiments done in the laboratory do not recapitulate very well the more complex infections that occur in patients. As such, the development of laboratory models that mimic disease, such as was done in this study, is important for accelerating the discovery of credible antimicrobial therapies that have a higher chance of clinical success.”
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