Preventing Superbugs By Deactivating Antibiotics With A Flash Of Light
Air Force Blasts A Laser Beam (Note: Not actually how this anti-antibiotic will work.) Bacterial resistance is becoming one of the most serious problems in the medical world, and it's largely a problem of our own making. We've become so good at making and distributing antibiotics to kill bacteria that, as the antibiotics build up in the environment, the bacteria are becoming immune. They are turning into superbugs, resistant to all our best efforts, necessitating ever more powerful antibiotics, which just feeds the cycle. But researchers in the Netherlands are attempting to break that cycle. Scientists at the University of Groningen have developed a possible solution that involves automatic deactivation of antibiotics. This is a very complicated strategy, so here's the quick version (you can read the long version in the full paper). Some types of antibiotics rely on...