SuperbugsClay minerals may offer an answer to MRSA, other superbug infections
Researchers set out to identify naturally occurring antibacterial clays effective at killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They incubated the pathogens Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis, which breeds skin infections, with clays from volcanic deposit near Crater Lake, Oregon. They found that the clays’ rapid uptake of iron impaired bacterial metabolism. Cells were flooded with excess iron, which overwhelmed iron storage proteins and killed the bacteria.
Superbugs, they are called: Pathogens, or disease-causing microorganisms, resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Such antibiotic resistance is now a major public health concern.
“This serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future,” states a 2014 World Health Organization report, “it’s happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.”
Could the answer to this threat be hidden in clays formed in minerals deep in the Earth?
Biomedicine meets geochemistry
“As antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains emerge and pose increasing health risks,” says Lynda Williams, a biogeochemist at Arizona State University (ASU), “new antibacterial agents are urgently needed.”
An NSF release reports that to find answers, Williams and colleague Keith Morrison of ASU set out to identify naturally occurring antibacterial clays effective at killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The scientists headed to the field — the rock field. In a volcanic deposit near Crater Lake, Oregon, they hit pay dirt. Back in the lab, the researchers incubated the pathogens Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis, which breeds skin infections, with clays from different zones of the Oregon deposit.
They found that the clays’ rapid uptake of iron impaired bacterial metabolism. Cells were flooded with excess iron, which overwhelmed iron storage proteins and killed the bacteria.
“The ability of antibacterial clays to buffer pH also appears key to their healing potential and viability as alternatives to conventional antibiotics,” state the scientists in a paper recently published in the journal Environmental Geochemistry and Health.
“Minerals have long had a role in non-traditional medicine,” says Enriqueta Barrera, a program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
“Yet there is often no understanding of the reaction between the minerals and the human body or agents that cause illness. This research explains the mechanism by which clay minerals interfere with the functioning of pathogenic bacteria. The results have the potential to lead to the wide use of clays in the pharmaceutical industry.”
Ancient remedies new again
Clay minerals, says Williams, have been sought for medicinal purposes for millennia. Studies of French clays—green clays historically used in France in mineral baths — show that the clays have antibacterial properties. French green clays have been used to treat Mycobacterium ulcerans, the pathogen that causes Buruli ulcers.
