19-Nov-10 11:00 AM CST
Anti-Cholesterol Drugs Also Anti-Bacterial, Study Says
Statins, a class of drugs widely used to control cholesterol and the prevention of heart disease, can also help fight bacterial infections, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences.
According to the study, statins play a significant role in increasing phagocytes (white blood cells that protect the body by ingesting bacteria and other harmful foreign particles) ability to kill harmful bacteria. Dr. Christopher Glass, M.D., Ph.D., one of the lead scientists of the study, said that the discovery could have large ramifications given the number of people currently using statins.
“Clinical research indicates that perhaps 100 million Americans have elevated cholesterol levels that could benefit from statin therapy,” Glass said. “Thus any statin-associated changes to immune system function are certain to impact millions of people.”
Previous studies had suggested a link between statins and reduced severity of bacterial infections in hospital patients. Scientists had always theorized that statins had anti-inflammatory properties that made bacteria weaker and less resistant to phagocytes. When they tested statins on mice with staphyloccocus aureus, or staph, however, the researchers at UC San Diego found the statins were actually stimulating phagocytes to release what they call extracellular traps—DNA-based clusters of antibacterial peptides and enzymes that capture and kill bacteria before they have a chance to spread. Essentially, the statins helped turn the phagocytes into more efficient bacteria-killers.
Dr. Victor Nizet, M.D., who led the study with Glass, hopes their research can be used to help fight infections in hospitals, where difficult-to-treat bacterial diseases such as sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia can occur. He says future studies should focus on the role statins play in assisting commonly-prescribed antibiotics.
“We think that this is particularly important for bacteria in which white blood cells have difficulty killing them in the conventional method,” Nizet said in a video by UC San Diego. “Staph is very resistant to being taken up by white blood cells and can even survive against some of the oxidant molecules like peroxide and bleach that the white blood cells generate. So this alternative killing mechanism of trapping the bacteria and killing it outside the cell might be a particularly effective option.”
The study was published in the November 18 issue of Cell Host & Microbe.
Copyright © 2010 NPTA. All rights reserved.
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