A plant compound used in traditional medicine can help fight tuberculosis Penn State University

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – A compound found in the African bush – a plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years to treat a wide range of ailments – may be effective against tuberculosis, according to a new study available online and to be published in October. issue of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.

The team, led by Penn State researchers, found that a chemical compound, O-methylflavone, can kill mycobacteria that cause tuberculosis both in its active state and in its slow, hypoxic state. , which mycobacteria enter when pressed.

Bacteria in this area are more difficult to destroy and make infections more difficult to clear, according to corresponding author Joshua Kellogg, assistant professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences. .

Although the findings are preliminary, Kellogg said the work is a promising first step in finding new treatments against tuberculosis.

“Now that we have isolated this compound, we can continue to analyze and experiment with its structure to see if we can improve its performance and make it more effective against tuberculosis, ” he said. We are also studying the plant itself to see if we can identify other molecules that can kill this mycobacterium.

Tuberculosis – caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or Mtb – is one of the world’s leading killers among infectious diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are about 10 million cases a year worldwide, and about 1.5 million of them are fatal.

Although there are effective treatments for tuberculosis, researchers said there are several factors that make the disease difficult to treat. The usual course of antibiotics lasts six months, and if the patient is infected with a drug-resistant strain of the bacteria, it lasts two years, which makes the treatment more expensive and time consuming.

In addition, bacteria can take two forms in the body, including one that is very difficult to kill.

“There is a “normal” type of bacteria, in which it reproduces and grows, but when it is suppressed – when drugs or the immune system attack it – it enters a state of pseudo-hibernation, where it shuts down most of “This makes it difficult to kill those hibernating cells, so we were really keen to look at the chemicals. new molecules or molecules capable of attacking this state of hibernation.”

Many species of the Artemisia plant have been used in traditional medicine for centuries, the researchers said, including the African wormwood, which has been used to treat coughs and fevers. Recent studies in Africa have shown that this plant also has benefits in treating tuberculosis.

Kellogg said: “If we look at a piece of green plant that has hundreds of molecules in it, it’s good for killing tuberculosis.” “Our question was: There seems to be something in the plant that works – what is it?”

For their study, the researchers took an African oleander plant and divided it into “particles” – types of cells that are broken down into simple chemical components. They then tested each component against Mtb, noting whether or not it worked against the bacteria. At the same time, they created a chemical picture of all the particles tested.

“We also used machine learning to model how the changes in chemistry relate to the changes in performance we observed,” Kellogg said. “This allowed us to narrow down our focus to two areas that really worked.”

From these, the researchers found and tested a compound that effectively killed the bacteria in active and inactive forms of the pathogen, which the researchers said is important and rare in the treatment of tuberculosis. Some human cell type tests have shown it to be less toxic.

Kellogg said the research has the potential to open new avenues for developing new and improved treatments.

“Although the potency of this compound is too low to be used directly as a treatment for Mtb, it can still serve as a basis for creating more powerful drugs,” he said. In addition, it appears that there are other chemicals, similar to the African horn, that may also have similar properties.”

The researchers said that in the future, more studies are needed to further investigate the possibility of using the African hornbeam to treat tuberculosis.

Co-authors from Penn State are R. Teal Jordan, a research scientist and laboratory director of veterinary and biomedical sciences, and Xiaoling Chen, a graduate student in pathology. Also co-authors on the paper were Scarlet Shell, Maria Natalia Alonso, Junpei Xiao, Juan Hilario Cafiero, Trevor Bush, Melissa Towler and Pamela Weathers, all from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the United States Department of Agriculture helped support this work.