Metformin improves antibacterial treatment speed

Old dogs may not learn new tricks, but old drugs can. according to a research team based in China. A collaboration found that Metformin, a small molecule drug that has been used to treat type II diabetes for more than 50 years, can improve the efficiency and efficacy of antibacterial treatments for quick wound-healing. The results were published in Nano Research journal. 

The abuse of antibiotics has led to serious bacterial resistance, with about 1.27 million deaths in 2019 due to multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, bacterial resistance poses a fatal threat to human health. Non-antibiotic antibacterial technologies and antibacterial nanoagents with specific catalytic activities not only produce toxic substrates to directly kill bacteria-including antibiotic-resistant bacteria-but can also reduce the risk of the bacteria developing resistance to drugs.

The researchers set out to improve the antibacterial power of a nanoagent, while also lowering the toxicity to healthy cells-a risk that can be difficult to control due to the invasive nature of infection.

They speculated that the integration of metformin with a chemodynamic therapy nanoagent would improve the antibacterial effect. The researchers stirred metformin with copper chloride to form nanosheets whose surface was capped by the metformin molecules-enhancing the nanoagent's positive charge and strengthening the antibacterial effects.

Hence, it was confirmed that when metformin is used as antibacterial agent alone, excellent antimicrobial effects were achieved.