Antibiotics Are Made Thousands of Times More Effective by Silver

Several strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been documented over the past few years. Oddly enough, silver could prove the most efficient way of dealing with them. A new research paper published in yesterday's issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine documents the effect that said precious metal had on bacterial cells.

Specialist James Collins of the Boston University in Massachusetts and his fellow researchers say that, when in the form of dissolved ions, silver affects bacterial cells in two different ways.

First off, it toys with the make-up of their membrane, causing it to become more permeable.

This means that the membrane of bacterial cells has higher chances of being penetrated by antibiotics made of relatively large molecules, Nature reports.

Secondly, silver has been documented to affect the metabolism of bacterial cells, triggering the overproduction of oxygen compounds that are reactive and often toxic.

“We show that silver disrupts multiple bacterial cellular processes, including disulfide bond formation, metabolism, and iron homeostasis.”

“These changes lead to increased production of reactive oxygen species and increased membrane permeability of Gram-negative bacteria [i.e. bacteria that have a protective outer coating] that can potentiate the activity of a broad range of antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria in different metabolic states, as well as restore antibiotic susceptibility to a resistant bacterial strain,” the researchers write in the abstract to their paper.

When combined with silver, antibiotics could kill up to 1,000 times more bacteria then they normally would.

Worst-case scenario, they would only annihilate up to 10 times more bacterial cells than their usual norm, but this also counts as an improvement in their performance.

“This work shows that silver can be used to enhance the action of existing antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria, thus strengthening the antibiotic arsenal for fighting bacterial infections,” the researchers conclude.

Interestingly enough, silver has long been known to have antimicrobial properties. Thus, it was back in 400 BC when Hippocrates first commented on its potential use in medicine.