A modified compound taken from bloodroot, a wildflower native to North America, effectively fights multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in the test tube, according to a new study.
The discovery, published in Microbiology Spectrum, shows promise for further testing with the ultimate goal of finding new drugs to treat TB, the leading infectious killer after COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization.
"There's an urgent need to improve our pipeline of drugs to address multidrug-resistant strains of TB, to either reduce the required treatment time or tackle the development of resistance," said senior author Dr. Jim Sun, assistant professor in the UBC department of microbiology and immunology. "The drugs currently used for treatment are more than 50 years old. Unlike other bacterial infections, treating tuberculosis takes at least six months using a combination of drugs, which puts significant strain on the human body."
