A study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston found non-antibiotic therapeutic drugs, already approved for other purposes in people, could be effective in fighting antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens, as reported by the Galveston Blog.
Jourdan Andersson, a graduate student at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and others on the research team screened a library of 780 FDA-approved therapeutics and tested them against Yersinia pestis, a bacteria that is becoming antibiotic-resistant.
Here are three points:
1. As many as 94 drugs were found to be significantly effective in a cell-culture system when tested against Yersinia pestis.
2. After further screening, three drugs, trifluoperazine, doxapram and amoxapine were used in a mouse model and found to be effective in treating Yersinia pestis.
3. In further experiments, trifluoperazine was successfully used to treat Salmonella enterica and Clostridium difficile infections.
