Aspirin Tames Staph Bug's Aggressiveness

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Aspirin Tames Staph Bug's Aggressiveness

Tue Jul 22, 4:24 PM ET Add Health - Reuters to My

By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Salicylic acid -- the active ingredient

of aspirin -- blocks genes in Staphylococcus aureus that make this

nasty microbe so virulent. If this lab result translates into real-

world infections, maybe fewer antibiotics will be needed to treat

it.

A team of scientists, including Dr. Ambrose L. Cheung from Dartmouth

Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, and Dr. Arnold Bayer from

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, looked at what

salicylic acid did to Staph aureus in lab experiments.

They found that salicylic acid, at levels that could safely be

reached in blood, substantially reduced the ability of the microbe

to attach to components in blood. Consequently, the extent of blood

destruction was reduced. Salicylic acid also turned off genes in the

microbe that produce a characteristic toxin.

According to the researchers' report in the Journal of Clinical

Investigation, they then studied the effect of salicylic acid on

rabbits infected with Staph aureus.

The dose of salicylic acid had to be just right, Dr. Cheung told

Reuters Health, " With too low a dose being ineffective, while too

high a dose caused a paradoxical loss of effectiveness. "

It now seems possible to blunt a common infectious agent " without

actually inhibiting the overall growth of the organism or killing

it, " Dr. Cheung said. " Such 'smart targeting' offers a novel

approach to antimicrobial therapy as an adjunct to conventional

antibiotic agents. "

In a journal editorial, Dr. Mathias Herrmann from University of

Saarland in Homburg/Saar, Germany, calls the research an " exciting

new prospect for a widely used and established drug. "

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Investigation, July 2003.