National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Introduction
The presence of MRSA in hospital settings is a menace to all including science, people, and resources. MRSA, or Staphylococcus aureus, are gram-positive coccus shaped bacteria that can cause infections ranging from soft tissue to systemic infections such as pneumonia. With the variety of ways it causes infection, it has progressively built resistance to many antibiotics such as amoxicillin, penicillin, and more. The resistance is said to be caused by misuse and overuse of antibiotics. Recently, due to current research, the use of Quorum-Quenching Agents have been found to prevent antibiotic resistance formation in MRSA.
Methods
500 mice would be sectioned into 4 different treatment groups (QQA treatment, Bactrim, Vancocin, and none). All of the mice would be given morphine and kept under the exact same conditions and then infected with the same strain of MRSA. The experiment would take about 3 months and would require about $100,000 in funding and 3 researchers to conduct the experiment adequately and comprehensively.
Discussion
If QQAs are found to be efficient in preventing antibiotic resistance in MRSA then the burden of disease of MRSA on hospitals and researchers would be decreased because hospitals would have less cases of MRSA and it will be easier to treat and the researchers would not have to continuously find new treatments for MRSA. QQAs may also be used for bacteria with similar mechanism of infection to prevent resistance development in them as well.
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