Old antifungal drug shows promise against a dangerous gut infection
Abouelkhair AA, Abutaleb NS, Abdelrazek S, Seleem MN
Medicinal Plants
This one sits outside the garden and greenhouse: it's a medical microbiology study about human gut bacteria, not plants, so it has no direct bearing on your soil, houseplants, or foraging basket.
Doctors tested a drug called abafungin, which is normally used to fight fungal infections, against a nasty gut bacterium called Clostridioides difficile that causes serious diarrhea in hospital patients. It turned out to kill the bacteria well, reduce their toxic byproducts, and stop them from forming tough survival spores. When combined with an existing antibiotic in mice, it boosted survival rates dramatically compared to the antibiotic alone.
Key Findings
Abafungin inhibited 50% and 90% of tested C. difficile strains at just 0.25 and 0.5 μg/mL while sparing beneficial gut bacteria
At low doses it cut toxin production by 31.8% and reduced spore formation by about 4-log10, while also blocking spore germination
In mice with recurrent infection, combining abafungin with vancomycin raised survival to 83.3% versus 16.6% with vancomycin alone
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers found that abafungin, a drug normally used to treat fungal infections, also kills the bacterium that causes C. difficile, a dangerous hospital-acquired gut infection. Combined with the antibiotic vancomycin, it dramatically improved survival in mice with recurrent infection, offering a possible new treatment path for a hard-to-treat disease.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Antibacterial and antivirulence activities of abafungin against Clostridioides difficile: in vitro and in vivo studies.
Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) remains a major cause of healthcare-associated diarrhea worldwide, and is classified as an urgent public health threat by the Centers for Disease Control an...
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