Additivity vs Synergism: Investigation of the Additive Interaction of Cinnamon Bark Oil and Meropenem in Combinatory Therapy

Combinatory therapies have been commonly applied in the clinical setting to tackle multi-drug resistant bacterial infections and these have frequently proven to be effective. Specifically, combinatory therapies resulting in synergistic interactions between antibiotics and adjuvant have been the main focus due to their effectiveness, sidelining the effects of additivity, which also lowers the minimal effective dosage of either antimicrobial agent. Thus, this study was undertaken to look at the effects of additivity between essential oils and antibiotic, via the use of cinnamon bark essential oil (CBO) and meropenem as a model for additivity. Comparisons between synergistic and additive interaction of CBO were performed in terms of the ability of CBO to disrupt bacterial membrane, via zeta potential measurement, outer membrane permeability assay and scanning electron microscopy. It has been found that the additivity interaction between CBO and meropenem showed similar membrane disruption ability when compared to those synergistic combinations which was previously reported. Hence, results based on our studies strongly suggest that additive interaction acts on a par with synergistic interaction. Therefore, further investigation in additive interaction between antibiotics and adjuvant should be performed for a more in depth understanding of the mechanism and the impacts of such interaction.

[Spreading and mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance of microorganisms, producing beta-lactamases. Phenotypical screening for MBL producers (carbapenemases B1) among strains of Pseudomonas genus, isolated in cases of nosocomial infections]

Intrahospital strains (215) of the bacterial genus Pseudomonas isolated from patients of 30 Medical centers of 15 Russian regions have been investigated for antibiotic resistance. The bacterial cultures resistant to imipenem and/or meropenem were considered as metallo-beta-lactamase (MBL) producers. Production of subclass B1 MBL (carbapenemases) was evaluated by means of the double-disk approximation test using MBL inhibitor, EDTA. There were 55 P. aeroginosa strains (25.6%) resistant to imipenem and meropenem simultaneously; 19 isolates (8.8%) of P. aeroginosa were characterized by synergism between carbapenem and EDTA. The subclass B1 MBL producers are widely distributed in the intrahospital strain obtained from Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ekaterinburg, Omsk, and Tomsk hospitals.