Mud Harnessed to Fight Infections

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"The big deal with MRSA is that it starts out as a topical infection, but once it gets into the bloodstream, you get into a huge problem," Haydel observed. "So, while we're certainly not proposing to inject this directly into the bloodstream, we're hoping to stop that skin-to-blood transition from happening."

With the aid of electron and ion microscopes, the team is now tracking the way in which the most promising clays interact with bacterial membranes on the cellular level to pin down the source of their germ-fighting power.

Though optimistic about the long-range prospects for developing mud-based medicines --even perhaps in pill form -- the researchers stressed that good hygiene is still the best bulwark against bacteria. And they advised consumers against digging for medical gold in their own backyards.

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"You can move over just 100 yards from a geological site, and the mineralogical makeup of the new site can be completely different," Haydel noted. "We see that all the time, with different batches of clay. Or we even sometimes see -- as with two clays from France that we looked at -- two clays where both are the same on the mineralogical and chemical level, but one kills bacteria, and the other doesn't. So, we have a lot to figure out."

Then there's the fact that dirt can also harbor bad bacteria and toxic minerals such as mercury and arsenic, the researchers said. So, hand washing isn't about to go out of style just yet.

Meanwhile, George A. O'Toole, an associate professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire, described the research as "intriguing."

"The effort to identify a new class of antibiotics is important, because most of the varieties we now use have been around for the last 40 years," he noted. "However, typically when people look for new naturally derived antibiotics, they focus on living biological material, like plants. So, this is an interesting idea, in the sense that here, they're looking instead at an inorganic source like mud."

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