More and more bacteria have resistance to common antibiotics. This also includes this purple colored methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, better known as MRSA. Although they look more like harmless woolen balls on the recording, MRSA are one of the main causes for infections and deaths associated with antibiotic resistance.
Interestingly, diabetics are particularly often affected by MRSA infections. They also develop antibiotic -resistant staphylococcal strains above average, as researchers have just found out. In the study, mice were infected with bacteria, divided into groups with diabetic and non-diabetic animals and treated with an antibiotic. After five days, the antibiotic in diabetic mice had practically no effect. In the shortest possible time, they had formed an enormous colony of resistant bacteria. The non-diabetic mice, on the other hand, showed no resistance. But why?
Diabetes influences the ability to use sugar. When this is excess in the blood, the glucose molecules offer the perfect breeding ground for bacteria, as the research team explains. The immune system is also weakened by diabetes, which means that the bacteria can grow almost unhindered. With the increase in bacteria, the likelihood of resistance also increases. Because if random mutations occur that are resistant to antibiotics, they survive and continue to multiply. Antibiotic -resistant staphylococcus aureus take over the entire bacterial population within a few days.
This also has consequences for non-diabetics: “This interplay of bacteria and diabetes could be an important driver of the fast development and spread of antibiotic resistance that we see,” explains Brian Conlon from the University of North Carolina. Resistant bacteria spread like normal pathogens, for example over door handles or the air. In this way, resistance can also be transferred from person to person and cause major problems in the future. Preventing this is therefore currently one of the big tasks in the health sector.