Microbiologists from University College London recently came across a scientific breakthrough, as they found beard bacteria have antibiotic properties. Due to the misused of antibiotics for conditions that don’t require them, bacteria strains now show mutations making them resistant to typical treatments.
Scientists believe the bacteria found in filthy beards could solve the “mutated” bacteria strains, which keep escaping the medicine created to eradicate them.A research given by the British government last year warned that drug resistant bacteria could take a 10 million toll by 2050.
“What we do is grid out the individual bacteria on an agar plate which has been inoculated with an indicator strain. And we found, quite surprisingly, that the beard isolates were quite capable of killing the indicator strain that we have; showing that they actually produce antibiotics themselves.”
These statements make the suppression and further testing of mutated bacteria strains a crucial step to prevent an outbreak. Scientists from University College London say they’re testing bacteria from a wide variety of sources.
“So from 20 beards we managed to isolate at least a hundred different isolates for them, and around 25 percent of these showed antibiotic activity against our indicator strain,” alleged Dr. Roberts, “We wanted to either disprove or prove that that was actually correct, and we could find no evidence of that. So we have no real conclusion to say that beards are bad for you. Likewise, we can’t really say that they’re good for you,” Roberts said.
Microbiologist Adam Roberts’ findings not only disproved the myth of beards containing fecal matter, but also show promising content regarding drug resistant microorganisms. Through rigorous studying and testing of the microbe’s behavior, the wait for a recently developed strain able to fight the “super bugs” won’t be too long.
As exaggerated as the statements of men having fecal matter in their beards were, Dr. Roberts felt curiosity and had to see for himself. Luckily for him, he stumbled with a globally concerned breakthrough while disproving the link between beards and bacteria found in poop. Strangely enough, a fake viral video was responsibly for putting Dr. Adam Roberts on track to find beards are not the problem, but the solution.
Now the University College London team is helping to find new antibiotics, as the resistant bacteria continues to grow and the development of new medicine is in short supply. So, a global effort focused of finding new antibiotics and since medical science is currently in what’s known as a “discovery void”, researchers can only hope it comes to an end, sooner rather than later.
Source: The Washington Post