Rethinking antibiotic therapy of urinary tract infections
Suruchi Nepal, postdoc in the group of Coen van Hasselt at LACDR, was awarded an NWO XS project which aims to study the response to antibiotic treatment during a urinary tract infection (UTI). This knowledge will be used to determine how treatments of UTIs with antibiotics can be further improved.
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) affect 150 million people globally each year and are associated with a high rate of treatment failure, indicating that current antibiotic treatment strategies should be improved. Resistance against antibiotics is prevalent and increasing for UTIs and thus further threatens the effective treatment of UTIs. As such, there is a need to rethink the way how UTIs can be treated more effectively.
In this XS project, Suruchi Nepal and Coen van Hasselt will investigate how the environment where bacterial pathogens reside during a UTI, i.e., urine, may lead to distinctly different responses of bacterial pathogens to antibiotic treatments. In the project, a unique combination of experiments which replicate a UTI and computer simulations that describe antibiotic treatments in patients will be used. Ultimately, this project will provide important insights into potential opportunities for improving the selection and dosing schedules of UTIs, which could improve treatment outcomes in patients.
