Now we know why old schizophrenia medicine works on antibiotics-resistant bacteria

Thioridazine is known to possess antibacterial effects, although it was not clear how this worked............ "When we treat the bacteria with antibiotics alone, nothing happens -- the bacteria are not even affected. But when we add both thioridazine and antibiotics, something happens: thioridazine weakens the bacterial cell wall by removing glycine (an amino acid) from the cell wall. In the absence of glycine, the antibiotics can attack the weakened cell wall and kill staphylococcus bacteria," explains Janne Kudsk Klitgaard, visiting scholar at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark".

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