Pakistani scientist establishes medicinal value of cockroach
This may sound unbelievable yet cockroach – a common household pest loathed by most as it breeds in weirdest of the sites one can imagine of – may soon turn to be an efficient tool against diseases identified to be the major killers for our kids.
Dr Naveed Ahmed Khan – a medical scientist from Pakistan – was the first to look into this phenomenon, using cockroach for protection of human lives against ever emerging infections. He noticed that this was its brain. Nothing illogical as this is of common experience that many of the insects do survive even without limbs but hit their head and gone they off – brain is the most vital organ for them.
To the surprise of Dr Naveed and his co-researchers it was the brain of these cockroaches that contained the most potent antimicrobial molecules, nature of which have recently been identified in his lab. A wide variety of bacteria were found sensitive to these molecules including all kinds of gram positive and negative bacteria like pseudomonas, neuropathogenic E coli and MRSA.
Wide variety of cockroach species
“I do not want to create any scare but as a matter of fact thousands of our people would die of these infections and there is absolute no solution to it,” he said. Mentioning that Pakistan had a wide variety of cockroach species and the cockroaches here have been bred in some exclusively dirty conditions, the researcher expected the insects here to be super-cockroaches with highly active immune systems owing to their greater exposure to bacteria and other micro-organisms.
Unfortunately, no one in Pakistan is paying any attention to this unique resource. He met with government officials and tried to press upon them the urgent need to translate these insect molecules into actual drugs and attempt to tip the balance in the battle against infectious diseases. “It may sound idealistic, I genuinely wanted to serve and bring something back to Pakistan,” said Dr Naveed, adding that Pakistan may lack the resources but this search for new antibiotics has to be a priority for the government.
The scientist currently associated with the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at the Aga Khan University on basis of his work that ‘half of a cockroach can kill a million bugs’ has already clinched a celebrity status in the medical world of research. His research work reads to be antimicrobial properties of cockroaches and is in response to frequent outbreaks of infections among local population due to their uninterrupted exposure to cockroach.
The work indeed contradicts the convention under which scientists working on drugs look into plants because of their greater bio-mass making it easier to work with them. In reply to a question, he agreed that the media simultaneously needed to raise awareness about abuse of antibiotics and over-the-counter sale of drugs in Pakistan.
Dr Naveed and his colleagues have also worked on locusts as they seem to have dominated the ecological systems of some parts of Africa which made them wonder that may be locusts had some of the antimicrobial properties they were looking for to deal with super-bug infections. He also had another interesting idea shared with the Karachi Marine Centre to ascertain impact on marine animals of the sewage supply of Karachi being dumped into the Arabian Sea.
Maximum funds that the Pakistan Science Foundation offers to a single research project are two million rupees that roughly translates into 13 thousand pounds. “You need at least half a million US dollars to do a clinical trial and to take this research forward,” he explained. Reminding that South Asia is worst affected by infection outbreaks and future outbreaks were expected in light of the floods and climate change, he said Pakistan was exposed to a serious problem and needs a real solution.
