Podcast Summary

Hi, my name is Dr Warrick Bishop and welcome to my podcast or videocast station. I'd also like to welcome you to the Healthy Heart Network. Today I'd like to share with you something that just popped up in the news feeds that I get for cardiology and this is an interesting one and a little bit left field but I thought I'd share it because it's fascinating. potential journey into serendipity. What I'd like to talk about is an observation by some researchers that patients who've had acute coronary syndromes, that's unstable angina or heart attacks, patients who required stents in that acute setting, given a particular antiplatelet drug called Ticagrelor, appeared to have a lower rate of infection. in contrast to patients who didn't receive Ticagrelor. While this was an interesting observation, the researchers who made that observation wanted to follow that up further and started to undertake some observational and structured studies looking at Ticagrelor in more detail as a potential antibiotic. Because the patient group receiving the agents seemed to get less infections, they wanted to actually follow through and see if Ticagrelor really did have a role in preventing progression of bacterial infections. Well, amazingly, they've found that through an action, which is altogether separate to the action that this medication has on platelets, which is through a particular receptor called P2Y12 separate to the action that we use it for for stents to allow the blood to flow through this agent this Ticagrelor has some effect that appears to stop bugs growing and importantly it seems to have a real role in bugs that are considered multi-resistant. So this is a very exciting space to be. We now have, as you may be aware, a group of bugs, organisms, bacteria that have developed resistance to many of our modern antibiotic therapies. Ticagrelor seems to have an antibiotic effect which is altogether separate and different to what we've used up until now. Well, do you think taking this anti-platelet agent, if you've got a chest infection, is going to be the solution? Well, not just yet, because the doses you would need in your body to have the effect that's required to kill the bugs demonstrated on a petri dish is so high that you would bleed to death. So it's not about to go flying off the shelves for coughs, colds and ear infections. However, there will be some work done in that space. There will be an attempt to try and understand what part of Ticagrelor is acting as the antibiotic and that may well be able to be purified without the effect that it has on the platelets. Thereby meaning that we can create an agent without the antiplatelet effect. Based on the observation, subsequent proof in Petri dish that the... has activity and then purify the component that is the active ingredient and potentially use that for antibiotic treatment, specifically in this group of precalcitrant, difficult organisms, the multi-resistant gram-positive group of bugs, which are really very problematic in the modern world. So what a fascinating story. an anti-platelet agent used at the time of acute coronary syndromes when we put in stents, showing that the patients who received that agent seemed to be at lower risk of infection. That agent then being looked at in more detail and demonstrating in a petri dish that it really did seem to have an effect on microbiological organisms. opening the door, potentially paving a way for a discovery of a completely new class of antibiotic therapy. This is beautiful, serendipitous, scientific work. I think it's absolutely fascinating. I hope you find it an interesting story. I guess it means if you are about to go in and get a stent and they're wondering what antibiotic to give you in the immediate post-stent period, you might ask for Ticagrelor yourself. I'm going to leave it with you. As always, if you have any queries or questions, please let us know. If you have any suggestions or ideas for podcast videocast topics, please also let us know. I'm going to wish you the very best. As always, good health. Until next time, and bye for now.