Our high-sugar diet is breeding a new superbug By Liam MannixAugust 18, 2019 — 3.51pm
A new, deadly and antibiotic-resistant bacteria species is thriving in Australia’s hospitals, fuelled by our addiction to sugary junk food.Scientists are now pondering whether some hospital sweets, cakes and muffins should be banned for some patients in a bid to control the species’ spread.“In a Western society, if you’re a bacteria that has a bit of a sweet tooth, you’re in a pretty good position,” says Dr Sam Forster, a researcher at Melbourne’s Hudson Institute of Medical Research.Clostridium difficile is already one of the biggest health threats around the world.
It preys on patients who are given antibiotics that kill their gut bacteria, rapidly colonising the vacant territory in the gut and causing what Dr Forster describes as “pretty extreme diarrhoea”.Infections kill about 50 people a year in Australia, and 15,000 in the US.“It’s not really on people’s radar, but it’s a problem in every single hospital around the world,” says Professor Dena Lyras from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute.But scientists have now discovered something troubling: C. diff is splitting in two.In a study published in Nature Genetics this week, they revealed a second species of the bacteria is emerging, one perfectly adapted to our modern lives. “In a Western society, if you’re a bacteria that has a bit of a sweet tooth, you’re in a pretty good position." “What we’re witnessing right now is the movement from one species to two species. In real time,” says Dr Forster, one of the authors of that paper.The new species does not yet have a name, but it has a personality encoded in its genes: it spreads easily, is not worried by common hospital detergents and loves refined sugars.A global research team that included the Hudson studied 906 C. diff samples from 33 countries around the world, including swabs from Australian hospitals. The new species already accounts for over two-thirds of infections.The new species possesses genes allowing it to quickly break down refined sugars – particularly fructose – a person eats and turn that into fuel.
The researchers were able to trace its history right back 78,000 years, but it took until the 16th century – as humans started to eat more sugar – for it to really emerge. In the past 200 years its prevalence has exploded.In a separate experiment, mice eating a high-sugar diet were much more susceptible to colonisation by the new species, the researchers found.
What are superbugs?A superbug is strain of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics, either through mutation or adaptation.“That’s why we are raising this – we should be considering diets,” says Dr Forster.Hospitals struggling to treat infections should consider banning patients at high risk from eating foods high in certain refined sugars in a bid to starve the bug, he said.Another option may be a new antibiotic treatment pioneered by Professor Lyras and her team.The new drug was discovered as the team were growing C. diff on lab dishes for study.The samples grew, but did not release any spores – the sticky "seeds" the bacteria spread to colonise. Puzzled, the researchers soon discovered their dishes were contaminated with cephamycin, an antibiotic discovered in the 1970s.The drug's newly discovered property could make it a powerful new treatment for the bug and other spore-producing bacteria, Professor Lyras said.“The reality is that our hospitals have patients that need treatment options for this bacterium right now,” she said.
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