Abstract
Activities of plant polyphenols (PPs), resveratrol and quercetin, alone or in combination with four conventional antibiotics against Escherichia coli have been investigated. In medium without antibiotics, both polyphenols caused a dose-dependent growth inhibition. However, pretreatment with resveratrol (40 and 100 μg ml−1) and quercetin (40 μg ml−1) reduced the bacteriostatic effect of kanamycin, streptomycin, cefotaxime and partially of ciprofloxacin. With few exceptions, both PPs also reduced the bactericidal effect of tested antibiotics. Paradoxically, low doses of PPs enhanced the bactericidal effect of kanamycin and partially ciprofloxacin. Compared to quercetin, resveratrol showed a weaker effect on the induction of antioxidant genes and the resistance of E. coli to the oxidative stress generated by hydrogen peroxide treatment. Both polyphenols at high doses reduced membrane potential. Altogether, these findings suggest that the decrease in the bactericidal effect of antibiotics by high doses of polyphenols is mostly due to bacteriostatic action of the latter. In the case of quercetin, the contribution of its antioxidant activity for antibiotic protection may be significant. There is a growing interest in the use of plant-derived compounds to enhance the toxicity of traditional antibiotics. This and other studies show that, under certain conditions, the use of polyphenols as adjuvants may not exert the expected therapeutic effect, but rather to decrease antimicrobial activity of antibiotics.
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This work was supported by State assignment AAAA-A19-119112290009-1, also by grants from the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (FRBR) 19-04-00888, RFBR-Ural 19-04-590009, President of Russian Federation for young scientists MK-420-2020.4, and Norpexal Foundation. In this study, we used the equipment of Centre of collective usage of scientific instruments of Perm Federal Research Centre.
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All authors conceived the experiments and discussed the results. KVB, GVS and AVT performed the experiments and analyzed the data with ONO. GVS and ONO contributed to the writing of the paper.
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Oktyabrsky, O.N., Bezmaternykh, K.V., Smirnova, G.V. et al. Effect of resveratrol and quercetin on the susceptibility of Escherichia coli to antibiotics. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 36, 167 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-020-02934-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-020-02934-y