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The antibacterial effect of the combination of red raspberry concentrate and antibiotics on Staphylococcus aureus

Background

The increasing presence of both methicillin-resistant isolates of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and lately vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA), requires pursuit of new antibiotics. This is achieved in several ways: by modification of existing antibiotics, by synthesis of new antibiotics or by empirical screening of, so far, unexamined compounds. Consumption of fresh or processed berries (raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, currant, cranberry and other berries) is considered exceptionally beneficial due to the potent antioxidant and antibacterial activity of their phenolic compounds. Having in mind high percentage of highly resistant bacterial strains of Staphylococcus aureus and antibacterial potency of red raspberries' phenolic compounds, the goal of study was to investigate interactive effect of red raspberries' concentrate and antibiotics on Staphylococcus aureus [14].

Methods

In the experiment we used: 1) absolute physicochemically unchanged, 100% natural raspberry juice, 2) clinical isolate of Staphylococcus aureus, 3) antibiotic discs for examination of bacterial susceptibility, 4) sterile 0.9% sodium-chloride and 5) Müller-Hinton agar. Testing the existence and type of interaction between the red raspberries' concentrate and the antimicrobial drugs was performed in vitro using Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method in accordance with CLSI guidelines.

Results

The results of our study clearly indicate the existence of synergism between penicillin, cefoxitin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin and fusidic acid with red raspberries' concentrate as the source of various phenolic compounds.

Conclusions

New classes of antibiotics are extremely necessary and flavonoids represent a potentially new group of antimicrobial substances that could potentiate the activity of conventional antibiotics.

References

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Bokan, A., Vukmirović, S. & Medić, D. The antibacterial effect of the combination of red raspberry concentrate and antibiotics on Staphylococcus aureus. BMC Proc 9 (Suppl 7), A1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-9-S7-A1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-9-S7-A1

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