Biologists identify drug combinations to overcome antibiotic resistant bacteria

Editor's Note

A team of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) biologists have found that combinations of three different antibiotics can overcome a bacteria’s resistance, even when none of the three on its own or two together is effective, the February 7 UCLA Newsroom reports.

The biologists created a mathematical formula to help predict which combinations of drugs will be most effective in overcoming resistance. They tested every possible combination of six antibiotics including 20 different combinations of three at a time.

Two of the three-drug combinations were noticeably more effective than the biologists expected. Those combinations used drugs from three different classes of antibiotics.

Reed Hutchinson/UCLA UCLA's Elif Tekin, Casey Beppler, Pamela Yeh and Van Savage are gaining insights into why certain groups of three antibiotics interact well together and others don't. A landmark report by the World Health Organization in 2014 observed that antibiotic resistance - long thought to be a health threat of the future - had finally become a serious threat to public health around the world.