New Defense Against Bacteria Found

Today, it is possible to activate the immune system and speedily prevent infections due to bacteria from spreading in humans when they get wounded. Experts in dermatology at Lund University in Sweden feel that the understanding might contribute to the clinical significance of developing techniques for fighting bacteria.

It is not really necessary to fight infections and bacteria with antibiotics. They could just be simply gathered so that the body can battle it, say researchers Jitka Petrlova (lead author of the article) and Artur Schmidtchen, Professor in Dermatology and Venereology, Lund University. They made a joint study with their colleagues in Lund, Copenhagen, and Singapore. Their article was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

There are some fragments of thrombin, which is a common blood protein. It is found in wounds and can aggregate bacteria as well as the toxins, which is a process that has not been observed in normal blood plasma. It is an aggregation that happens fast in a wound. It enables bacteria as well as endotoxins to not only gather but also get "eaten" by a human body's inflammatory cells, according to Phys.org.

Artur Schmidtchen, an expert in innate immunity for more than 20 years talked about fighting bacteria when he said: "Compared to antibiotics, innate immunity has been around for millions of years - and I think we should consider the application of these concepts in an era of increasing antibiotic resistance."

Hence, the body can avoid the spread of the infection. This is a basic mechanism that takes care of bacteria as well as toxins even while the wound is getting healed, says Jitka Petrlova. She added that the new discovery shows a link between aggregation, amyloid formation and our primary defense against infections through immunity.

There are a number of aggregating proteins that might lead to amyloid disease in the skin or internal organs, such as the brain. Hence, one mechanism that is supposed to defend us from various infections can actually get over-stimulated and cause degenerative diseases.