A non-antibiotic approach for treating UTIs

The new treatment, reported in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, involves so-called FimH antagonists, which are non-antibiotic compounds and would not contribute to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance bacteria.

Beat Ernst and colleagues at the University of Basel in Switzerland explained that antibiotics are the mainstay treatment for UTIs.

Bacteria, however, are developing resistance to common antibiotics, with the emergence of "superbugs" that shrug off some of the most powerful new antibiotics.

Thus, the scientists decided to try a new approach -- developing substances that target bacteria virulence factors, inhibiting them from sticking to the inside of the urinary bladder.

Hence, microbes are not able to launch an infection and, furthermore, this new class of antimicrobials is expected to exhibit less selection pressure and, therefore, a reduced potential for the emergence of resistance.

The scientists described the development of anti-adhesion molecules that specifically interfere with the attachment of bacteria to human bladder cells.

The most potent of the substances, an indolinylphenyl mannoside, prevented a UTI from developing in mice (stand-ins for humans in this kind of experiment) for more than eight hours, the researchers found.

In the in-vivo treatment study, a very low dose of 25