LONDON, March 12 (Xinhua) -- British scientists say drugs used to treat common fungal infections could be used to treat tuberculosis (TB), one of the world's most deadly infectious diseases.

    Biologists at The University of Manchester, the United Kingdom, have found that chemicals called azoles, the active agent in many antifungal drugs, kill the TB bacteria, and could also be effective in tackling the emerging new strains of TB that are resistant to traditional antibiotics, science news website Alpha Galileo reported on Monday.

    The TB bacterium is a clever organism, able to evade the human immune system and to survive long-term, sometimes unnoticed, in the body.

    When the researchers began looking at the TB bug and its DNA content in more detail, they noticed it had some unusual characteristics, noting in particular the presence of a very large number of enzymes called P450s, which are usually associated with more complex organisms.

    "In humans, P450s oxygenate molecules in the body and are essential for steroid metabolism; they are also prevalent in the liver where they help us detoxify and dispose of countless chemicals and toxins that enter our system. Most bacteria have few, if any, P450s but we discovered that the TB bacterium has 20 different types," Andrew Munro, who led the research, was quoted as saying.

    The azoles drugs are able to kill off fungal infections by blocking the actions of one of its P450s that is essential for maintaining the cell structure, the Manchester researchers said.

    The researchers were able to show in laboratory experiments that various types of these azoles drugs were also very good at killing the TB bacterium, and also bind very tightly to a number of the TB P450 enzymes that they have isolated, inactivating their function.

    The research has already attracted interest from one major pharmaceutical company, according to the report.