Working on the Drawbacks

Helicobacter pylori, not to scale (Yale illustration)

In our household we are partial to buying foodstuffs with antioxidants. (Antioxidants prevent cell damage that can lead to cancer, heart disease, and a host of other ailments.)

However, antioxidants also protect some bacteria that are harmful to human health.

A nutrient that is common in the human diet has been found to aid the survival of a cancer-causing bacterium, a new Yale study finds...

The nutrient, called ergothioneine, or EGT, a known antioxidant, was found to protect bacteria from oxidative stress — an imbalance in the body between reactive oxygen species, known as free radicals, and antioxidants — which is a hallmark of many disease-causing infections.

bacteria ingest the EGT nutrient — which is abundant in foods like mushrooms, beans, and grains — to aid their survival. In the case of the gastric cancer-causing pathogen Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium used the nutrient to compete successfully for survival in host tissues.

Because antioxidants provide so many health benefits the answer is not to reduce their consumption but to inhibit their absorption by the bacteria. [bold added]

“We were excited to discover an unconventional mechanism that enables bacteria to withstand oxidative stress during infection,” said Stavroula Hatzios, an assistant professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and of chemistry in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and senior author of the study.

“Because the protein that bacteria use to take up EGT operates in a manner distinct from that of its counterpart in human cells, we are optimistic that a specific drug could be developed to inhibit microbial uptake of this nutrient,” she added.

Very few scientific breakthroughs are an unalloyed good. The solution is not to go back to the way things were but to keep working on the negative effects.