preview

Tamoxifen Research Paper

Decent Essays

According to drugs.com, tamoxifen is a synthetic drug, that is used to treat some types of breast cancer in men and women. It is also used to lower a woman's chance of developing breast cancer if she has a high risk (such as a family history of breast cancer).
What is MRSA? Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria are resistant to all beta-lactam antibiotics such as methicillin, penicillin, oxacillin, and amoxicillin. Sometimes called a “super-bug” because of its ability to resist so many of our antibiotics. MRSA can be fatal and according to the CDC, of the over 80,000 invasive MRSA infections every year, 11,285 related deaths occur. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has become the bacteria of this decade. …show more content…

Better enabling them to respond to, ensnare and kill bacteria in laboratory experiments. The tamoxifen treatment in mice also enhanced clearance of the antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogen MRSA and reduced the mortality rate. Evidence suggests that tamoxifen has cellular effects that contribute to its effectiness. For example, tamoxifen influences the way call produce fatty molecules, which are also know as sphingolipids. One particular sphingolipid, ceramide, plays a role in regulating activities of white blood cells known as neutrophils. Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology tested Tamoxifen’s immune-boosting effect in human neutrophils and with a mouse model. The researchers incubated human neutrophils with tamoxifen, when compared with untreated neutrophils, they found that not only did the tamoxife-treated …show more content…

NETS are a mesh of DNA, antimicrobial peptides, enzymes, and other protiens that neutrophils spew out to kill pathogens. For the mice experiment they injected one set of mice with the tamoxifen, and another with a control. After an hour once the tamoxifen had been fully absorbed into their system, the researcher injected both sets of mice with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). They treated the mice again with tamoxifen or the control one and eight hours after infection and monitored them for five days. Tamoxifen significantly protected the mice — none of the control mice survived longer than one day after infection, while about 35 percent of the tamoxifen-treated mice survived five days. While 35% is not a large amount it is a step forward, it is progress.
The Future While there is progress in tamoxifen becoming a treatment for MRSA, this isnt without any drawbacks. While tamoxifen has been effetive against MRSA in the study
UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology had done, the outcome could be vary with other pathogrens because there are several known bacterial species that have evolved ways to escape NET

Get Access