An antimicrobial protein found in the blood of an Australian oyster could help in the fight against superbugs.
While slurping oysters is not likely to replace popping a pill, they could help in the fight against superbugs. A ground breaking discovery by Southern Cross University has shown oysters might be able to help treat a growing worldwide public health problem: antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Australian scientists have discovered that a protein found in the haemolymph - the equivalent of blood - of the Sydney rock oyster, Saccostrea glomerata, can kill bacteria itself and increase the effectiveness of some conventional antibiotics.
Antimicrobial resistance has been described as a “looming global health crisis” that - without urgent action - could eventually render critical drugs ineffective.
In lab tests, the haemolymph protein alone was effective at killing the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae, which mainly causes pneumonia, and Streptococcus pyogenes, the culprit for strep throat and scarlet fever. Better yet, when used in combination with antibiotics, including ampicillin and gentamicin, it improved their effectiveness from two- to 32-fold against certain bacteria.
Prof Jonathan Iredell, an infectious diseases physician and clinical microbiologist at the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the research, said the oyster protein belonged to a class of compounds called antimicrobial peptides. “There is a lot of excitement about their discovery because they often contain interesting kinds of mechanisms that we haven’t seen before.”