Until now, drugs which fight gastrointestinal infections and those which treat acute inflammation have been found to interfere with each other. For instance, people infected with the Helicobacter pylori bacterium have needed to deal with the additional risk of gastrointestinal bleeding associated with the use of aspirin and other inflammatory drugs.
Australian research chemists, led by Philip C. Andrews of Monash University, have designed a new drug which treats gastrointestinal infections and acute inflammation at the same time. They have successfully synthesized bispirin, a bismuth acetylsalicylate complex which combines the effectiveness of bismuth carboxylate compounds as anti-infection agents with that of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) as an anti-inflammatory drug. Their initial tests have shown that bispirin’s antibacterial effects are comparable or better than those of current bismuth drugs, and investigations of bispirin’s anti-inflammatory activity are currently in progress.
This journal article has also been recently featured on C&EN – read it here.
Read this ‘HOT’ ChemComm article in full:
