Talk:Bacitracin

Bacitracin/Nostrils
Recently heard of bacitracin being applied to the inside of the nostrils for treatment of chronic Staph (aureus) infection -- specifically methicillin resistant staph. Anybody qualified to comment?
 * Bactroban is, I think, more commonly used to reduce nasal carriage of MRSA, usually in hospital or nursing home staff, but certainly Bacitracin is also used. This isn't treatment of an infection: it's a means of reducing colonization of the nares in order to prevent spread to individuals likely to develop infection. - Nunh-huh 00:03, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Indications for Bacitracin?
ANTIBIOTICS Bacitracin has the same basic mechanism of action as vancomycin (i.e. it inhibits peptioglycan synthesis)... but does anyone know what its spectrum of activity is? Vancomycin only works on gram positive bacteria. Is bacitracin the same? Cajolingwilhelm 03:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Bacitracin has the most profound effect (in vitro) on Gram-positives and a 'few' gram negatives (couldn't find a list). Only systemic Staph infections qualify for consideration of a non-topical (parenteral) use of Bacitracin and this requires a pre-administration check of renal function and daily renal labs during use. Hope that helps. (Ref: Physicians desk reference, 54th edition, 2000. pg 2227) BruceD270 14:59, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Tracy
Was the girl named "Tracy I" or "Margaret Tracy"? Could the history section be expanded a bit to explain the background of how the bacteria and antibiotic were isolated and under what conditions this occurred? --98.70.142.120 (talk) 19:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The name is surely NOT Margaret Tracy, but "Tracy I." We don't know her last name except that it starts with the letter "I." The cite (from Science, 1945) is given in the article. S  B Harris 23:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit unsure about how you can be so certain. The article referenced says: "We named this growth-antagonistic strain for the patient, 'Tracy I.'"   I understand 'Tracy' to be the surname and 'I.' to refer to a laboratory numbering system (so 'Tracy I.' refers to the name of the strain, not the patient).   At any rate, the Merriam-Webster dictionary lists the origin of bacitracin as from "Margaret Tracy...1936 American child in whose tissues it was found".   Could you please list your source that indicates otherwise?   --128.227.7.23 (talk) 15:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hey guys, I just looked up Meleney and Johnson's work: Bacitracin, Meleney & Johnson, American Journal of Medicine. 1949 Dec;7(6):794-806. It looks like 'Tracey I' is the name of the strain, and either the girl's first or last name is 'Tracey' with an 'e'.  Here's the first paragraph of the article. "The antibiotic bacitracin, is produced by the Tracey I strain of Bacillus subtilis which was discovered in June, 1943, in the Laboratory of Bacteriological Research of the Department of Surgery, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.   The organism was recovered from the damaged tissue and street dirt debrided from the compound fracture of a seven year old child by the name of Tracey.   The antibiotic was therefore named 'bacitracin.'"   --159.178.246.30 (talk) 18:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So, after all of this, I'm fairly certain that the girl's LAST name is Tracy or Tracey...  Are there any other references or sources of information about her?   --98.70.52.179 (talk) 16:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

You may be right. It's fairly common for medical journals of the era to give only the patient's last initial. However, that said, every dictionary in the world backs up the idea that the source is a girl Margaret Tracy, although I do not know where they got that info. The 1949 article you refer to is not the first report of the antibiotic, which was in 1945, and the quote from THAT is in the Wikipedia article, so that's our primary and first source. If "Tracy I." doesn't stand for somebody named Tracy I... then it's "Tracy I." where the I is a Roman numeral. It may be that by 1949, the original discovering doctors themselves have mutated the spelling to Tracey when it's really Tracy (as was reported in 1945).

Just to make things confusing: many dictionaries give the birth date of the patient as c. 1936, apparently by back-calculating when a 7 year-old treated in 1943 should have been born. However, on the web one can find a note from a woman who claims to be the granddaughter of said Margaret Tracy and SHE claims this girl was 6 (not 7) when she was hit by a truck in a street trying to recover a ball, and got her compound fracture and road dirt contamination that way. This woman supposedly died of colon cancer in 1994 at the age of 56, which would have made her birthdate about 1937 and indeed made her 6 in 1943, although of course all these things are subject to a year or two either way from treating before or after a birthday (for all we know, she was 6 when injured and 7 by the time the infected leg was cultured). Worse still, the granddaughter (Margaret Tracy Addiego) has first given names "Margaret Tracy," but she says at first that her grandmother's name was "Margaret Treacy." That may be a typo. And we don't know whether to believe her. S B Harris 23:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I also was interested in bacitracin's origins... So after all of this we don't have any other references?   This sounds like the HeLa cells story.   If anyone else has a published reference that may clear this all up, please post it!   --159.178.249.176 (talk) 13:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The granddaughter is absolutely correct. The young girl's name was Margaret Treacy. For verification, check the list of graduates, class of 1949, of Holy Name School ( 202 West 97th Street | New York, NY 10025 | (212) 749-1240 | fax (212) 749-4363 | holyname@aol.com ). She was in my class, and lived at the address next to mine on West 95th St., between Central Park West and Columbus Ave. After graduating from Holy Name, Margaret attended Cathedral High School (St. Joseph's Annex) in the business program, but transferred to Walton High School in the Bronx. Her picture and name should be in the Periwinkle, the yearbook for that school, in 1953. There were articles and pictures in the New York Daily News some years around the time of her birthday. Sometimes they misspelled her name as Tracy, perhaps because of the spelling of bacitracin, or because they were familiar with the "Dick Tracy" spelling only. For verification, searching www.newspaperarchive.com for bacitracin and margaret and (tracy or treacy) between the years 1943 and 1953 in the United States yields 32 newspaper articles, which can be seen if paid for.

Notes January 6, 2013: Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital has an online retrospective that was posted in 2003 and discusses the discovery of Bacitracin, at http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/psjournal/archive/fall-2003/75years.html#Anchor-20-51540 and which indicates that the girl was named Margaret Tracy (but of course that does not mean that her surname was not correctly spelled T-R-E-A-C-Y). Also, I have a web page that incorporates material from that source and also from a well-know pharmacological text (albeit an older edition) that shows the "probable" structural formula. That page is at https://files.nyu.edu/jmm257/public/other/bacitracin.html and there is a cross-reference at https://files.nyu.edu/jmm257/public/querencias/natto.html because it is the same bacterium, Bacillus subtilis, that is used to ferment soybeans in making natto (which is something I do). Although the Tracy-I and Natto strains are distinguished by microbiologists, both produce compounds that tend to kill off competitive organisms (i.e., other bacteria)./s James M. Maloney 15:35, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

My name is Michael Addiego and I can attest that my mother, Margaret Treacy, was the little girl referred to by the Columbia Presbyterian articles and all other articles referring to Margaret Treacy at the patient. My daughter is the "granddaughter" who had written in with the accurate details of the patient Margaret Treacy, aged 7, running into the street to chase a ball and being struck by a truck whick caused the compound fracture in her leg, which in turn led doctors at Columbia Presbyterain to their discovery. I have photographs at home of my mother (now deceased due to colon cancer in 1994) with Dr Balbina and the other scientists involved in the breakthrough. Obviously, we are proud that my mom was the vehicle through which this amazing drug was discovered and made available for infection fighting. She was an amazing woman, born in March of 1936 in NYC and lived in the mid 90s street of upper Manhattan. We tell both her granddaughters that whenever we need to apply bacitracin to their cuts or scrapes, it's "grandma" helping them. That means a lot to us all. Thank you for your interest. Michael Addiego, Long Island, NY — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikeadd58 (talk • contribs) 06:10, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Chemical Structure is wrong
I believe the structure is incorrect. Specifically the dihydroxythiazole ring has the incorrect connectivity. The L-leucine should be connected at the 4 position instead of the 5. The correct structure is shown here http://www.sinoapi.com/Pharmacopoeia/pharmacopoeia-ep5.asp?cas=1405-87-4 and in the crystal structure: (FEBS, 1991, 285(1)115-119).Jtyndall03 (talk) 23:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Citation does not support claim. Claim must be removed.
Are people reading the research that they cite??? Based on this paper (which I don't doubt):
 * Title: Infection and allergy incidence in ambulatory surgery patients using white petrolatum vs bacitracin ointment. A randomized controlled trial.
 * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8805732

someone decided that this was appropriate to say in the wikipedia article:
 * Despite frequent topical use, there is little evidence that bacitracin is more effective than simple petroleum jelly for minor wounds.[1]

BUT if you follow that link, they've obviously taken liberties with the conclusion. THAT RESEARCH HAD TO DO WITH COMPARING THE ADVERSE REACTIONS BETWEEN THE TWO, NOT WITH HOW EFFECTIVE THEY ARE IN COMPARISON TO EACH OTHER. If you read the entire paper, you'll see what it's talking about. In fact, here's the conclusion:
 * CONCLUSIONS:
 * "White petrolatum is a safe, effective wound care ointment for ambulatory surgery. In comparison with bacitracin, white petrolatum possesses an equally low infection rate and minimal risk for induction of allergy."

The statement in the article cannot stay there. This throwing in of non-supporting citations as a kind of false support is rampant in wikipedia.Tgm1024 (talk) 15:42, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I fixed section headers in this talk page. Talk page Table of Contents could not be made automatically. Talk page was completely frigged up
Ok, somehow (either by hand editing the section headers, or by someone not understanding how to add a new section, etc.) the section headers ended up being completely frigged up. People were editing this talk page directly instead of clicking on "new section", or editing the section itself.

The talk page structure therefore caused the automatic generation of the table of contents to be missing. Also, I added a section title to the topmost conversation.

Please be careful people.Tgm1024 (talk) 16:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)