Researchers have discovered an ancient Chinese medicine that is effective against tuberculosis and can decrease the bacteria's drug resistance.
The herbal remedy called artemisinin can stop the bacterium from reaching the dormant stage by attacking a specific molecule called heme found on the bacterium's oxygen sensor. Scientists say that antibiotic resistance starts during the dormant stage of the bacterium.
Robert Abramovitch from the Michigan State University said that "when TB bacteria are dormant, they become highly tolerant to antibiotics. Blocking dormancy makes the TB bacteria more sensitive to these drugs and could shorten treatment times." He further explained that Mtb starved of oxygen will reach the dormant stage but since its ability to sense was already removed, it cannot "become dormant and will die."
Tuberculosis is a global health concern that requires six months of treatment. However, "patients often don't stick to the treatment regimen because of the length of time it takes to cure the disease," said Abramovitch. When the prescribed duration for a certain drug is not completed, it predisposes the bacteria to evolve and become drug-resistant.
One-third of the total global population suffers from diseases caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2015, a total of 1.8 million mortalities due to TB were recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The airborne infectious agent survives inside the body and compromises the immune system.
In 2015, Chinese researcher Tu Youyou became the first woman in China to receive a Nobel Prize for Medicine because of her discovery of Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) against the mosquito-borne disease, malaria. In her undergraduate study, she prepared 380 herbal medicines and ended up using qinghaosu, a sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua L.) used back in 400 AD to successfully treat malaria.
The study published in the journal of Nature Chemical Biology also serves as a key for shortening tuberculosis treatment duration because of artemisinin's ability to stop the bacterium's dormant stage.