HAMILTON, Ontario, June 3 (UPI) -- A Canadian-led team of medical investigators says it's discovered a central controller for the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and its drug-resistant forms.
Scientists at McMaster University's DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research said they found a chemical made by the superbug determines the disease's strength and ability to infect.
The bacteria cause for a wide range of difficult-to-treat human infectious maladies, including pneumonia, toxic-shock syndrome and flesh-eating diseases, the researchers said. It has become known as a superbug since it's become increasingly resistant to antibiotics and especially troublesome in hospitals.
"We've found that when these small chemicals in the bacteria are shut down, the bacteria are rendered non-functional and non-infectious," said Assistant Professor Nathan Magarvey, who led the study. "We're now set on hacking into this pathogen and making its system crash."
The study that included scientists at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Nebraska appears in the journal Science.
