Study of the effects of antibacterial agents on bacteria development by spectrophotometric method

Author: irina papukashvili
Co-authors: Tamaz Mdzinarashvili, Mireille Ansaldi
Keywords: Bacteria, Bacteriophage, Antibiotic
Annotation:

Antibiotic resistance is a major public health concern, as well as in agriculture and food safety. The growth of pathogenic bacteria, in particular drug-resistant forms, renders it more difficult to fight against infectious diseases. Even major pharmaceutical companies are hesitant to spend the time and money to develop new antibiotics. An effective alternative could be the use of cocktails of sublethal doses of antibiotics together with alternative therapy such as lytic phages. Our results show that several combinations of phages with various classes of antibiotics used at sublethal doses can inhibit bacterial growth where they do not if used independently, which we think might be due to the different mechanisms of action of phages and antibiotics. Experiments conducted with temperate phages such as HK620 have shown a synergistic action of these phages at sub-inhibitory concentrations with small amounts of antibiotics. This effect was observed with most of tested phage/antibiotic combinations, which we think is due to the different mechanisms of action of phages and antibiotics.