CHAPEL HILL NC – Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have found that a bacterium can become much more or less susceptible to an antibiotic depending on the specific bacterial community in its midst.
The scientists found specifically that the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa can produce specific molecular factors that dramatically increase or decrease an antibiotic’s ability to kill Staphylococcus aureus, another bacterium that often co-infects with P. aeruginosa.
The findings, published in PLoS Biology, point to the possibility of new antibiotics employing these factors to enhance antibiotic susceptibility.