Humble seaweed could be the saviour of humanity, according to research that reveals it has the power to help defeat drug-resistant superbugs.
Antimicrobial resistance is killing 700,000 people a year around the world, and is predicted to cost 10m lives annually by 2050. Widespread use of antibiotics is seeing the drugs lose their ability to kill the germs they were supposed to conquer — a growing crisis that has led to a global search for new drugs.
In a discovery described this weekend by Professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, as “fantastic”, scientists have discovered that the common seaweed golden kelp, or Laminaria ochroleuca, contains microbes that could bolster the war on superbugs. It boasts a range of actinobacteria, which have proved a