Human tape worm drug shows promise against MRSA in lab
Date: 1.5.2015
Researchers based at Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital show in a new study that a drug already approved to fight tapeworms in people, effectively treated MRSA superbugs in lab cultures and in infected nematode worms.
The scientists are pursuing further testing with hope that the findings will lead to new treatments for deadly MRSA infections.
A new study provides evidence from lab experiments that a drug already used in people to fight tapeworms might also prove effective against strains of the superbug MRSA, which kills thousands of people a year in the United States.
The paper, published in the journal PLoS ONE, showed that niclosamide, which is on World Health Organization's list of essential medicines, suppressed the growth of dozens of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cultures in lab dishes and preserved the lives of nematode worms infected with the superbug. In these tests, both niclosamide and a closely related veterinary parasite drug, oxyclozanide, proved to be as effective (at lower concentrations) as the current last-resort clinical treatment, vancomycin.
The drugs both belong to a family of medicines called salicylanilide anthelmintics and they both also trounced another "gram positive" pathogen, Enterococcus faecium, in lab tests.
