Curdlan is a popular carbohydrate in the food industry. Its name is derived from the word “curdle”, and as it suggests, it’s widely used as a thickener and stabiliser in everything from sausages to milk substitutes.
The Key to Treating TB May Be in a Common Carbohydrate, More recently, it has caught the eye of the pharmaceutical industry. That’s because curdlan, itself produced by bacteria, is able to trigger an antibacterial response in a range of environments and organisms. Among other uses, researchers are looking at curdlan as a possible treatment for cancers and other diseases.One of those diseases is tuberculosis (TB), the infection responsible for killing more people than any other infectious disease in human history. South Africa has one of the world’s highest TB burdens – along with 29 other countries including India and China. These countries contribute 86% of the globe’s 10 million annual TB cases. South Africa’s combined burden of TB, TB/HIV and multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), driven by socioeconomic factors and its high HIV numbers, is especially worrying. Existing remedies made up of cocktails of antibiotics are not effective against MDR-TB. This has sparked interest in finding alternative treatments. It’s why our research group at the School of Pharmacy at the University of the Western Cape, and others, are beginning to test the efficacy of curdlan as a potential drug candidate.
The Key to Treating TB May Be in a Common Carbohydrate, In a recent paper, for instance, we show very promising results for the potential treatment of TB using curdlan-based nanoparticles. Our work centres on developing host-directed therapies using curdlan. Such treatments essentially let the human immune system do the heavy lifting. This is done by activating its natural antibacterial mechanisms while controlling the inflammation that results from such activation. Inflammation is a signal that the immune system is working. But if inflammation is out of control it can cause major damage to human tissue, as seen in severe COVID-19 infections. Research has already shown that host-directed therapies hold immense potential for the treatment of TB. To understand how these therapies work, it’s important to understand how TB infection unfolds in the human body.Primary TB infection occurs when a person inhales aerosol droplets, released by contagious individuals, that contain Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb). The Key to Treating TB May Be in a Common Carbohydrate, This is the bacterium that causes TB. Once inhaled, M.tb quickly makes its way to the lung’s alveolar space, made up of tiny air sacs that sit at the end of the bronchioles, which are the air passages inside the lungs.Here it is absorbed by what’s known as alveolar macrophages, the lung cells that are usually the first line of defence against pollutants and pathogenic organisms. Typically these macrophages would trigger an immune response in the body. But M.tb has evolved so cannily that it eludes or switches off this immune-triggering response in the macrophages. These alveolar macrophages become its infection headquarters; the bacterium remains concealed within these cells.
Source: This news is originally published by allafrica