An international research collaboration has found that certain soil in Northern Ireland has powerful antibiotic properties.
Overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture over the past several decades has led to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains such as MRSA. These superbugs can't be treated with current antibiotics and the infections they cause kill around 700,000 people worldwide each year.
The development of new antibiotics has been a high priority for the World Health Organisation and global pharmaceutical companies, and potential answers have been found in some unusual places. Researchers have been investigating live soil for clues about how other bacteria fight each other in the wild, with the hopes fo developing new antibiotic drugs.
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An international collaboration between researchers in Northern Ireland, Brazil, and England has discovered that special soil in Northern Ireland could yield breakthrough antibiotics. The Traditional Medicine Group followed clues from ancient Irish folk medicine about soil in west Fermanagh, and found several new antibiotic-producing microorganisms.
Soil from Fermanagh's alkaline grassland and bogland was found to be effective in killing several antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, including MRSA. The next step for the researchers will be to identify the exact compounds causing the antibiotic effect, with the ultimate aim of producing and testing a new antibiotic drug.
Source: Silicon Republic
