Author: Dan Garisto / Source: Science News for Students
Brain-eating amoebas are the stuff of nightmares. People infected with these microscopic monsters typically die within a week.
To treat infections, doctors currently use a chemical cocktail of drugs. Even with treatment, however, these parasites usually prove fatal. But that may change. In fact, a new silver “bullet” might — quite literally — prove their downfall.Researchers in Malaysia report that silver nanoparticles can make drugs more effective as they fight off brain-eating amoebas. The scientists began by growing two kinds of these parasites in test tubes. Both have unruly names. One is Acanthamoeba castellanii (Ah-KAN-thuh-MEE-buh Kas-tel-LAHN-ee-eye). The other is Naegleria fowleri (NAYG-lehr-ee-uh Fow-LAER-ee). The researchers treated these amoebas with drugs. Some got only the drugs. Others got the drugs together with a dose of silver nanoparticles. The silver greatly boosted the killing power of most drugs, the new study reports.
Marion Paolini is a cancer scientist working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Although not involved in the new work, she does find the new treatment “promising.” However, she notes “it would still have to be proven in vivo.” By that, she means it needs to be tested in people or some other animal, not just in the test tube.
The new research was published October 15 in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
What inspired the new treatment
Brain-eating amoebas are rare. Only a few hundred infections have ever been reported. But the outcome for people who do become infected is grim. About 98 out of every 100 infected people die. Sometimes, the amoebas literally eat away parts of their brains. Other times, the microbes cause a fatal swelling in the brain.
Ayaz Anwar is a biologist at Sunway University in Sunway City, Malaysia. He became interested in these microscopic parasites after…
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