Purpose: Because of the emergence of multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria, a number of\ninfectious diseases have become a major concern to treat in health care services worldwide.\nThis situation is worsened by the fact that very limited progress has been made in\ndeveloping new and potent antibiotics in recent years. In this context antimicrobial peptides\n(AMPs) represent new potential therapeutic compounds with bactericidal or bacteriostatic\nactivity against closely related bacterial strains.\nMethods: In this study, a collection of enterococci (n=170) from clinical sources were\ninvestigated for their potential to inhibit multiresistant nosocomial enterococci from Iranian\nhospitals.\nResults: Four isolates produced antimicrobial peptides that inhibited all the antibiotic\nresistant enterococci. This included three Enterococcus faecium isolates producing\ncombinations of enterocin A, B and L50 AB. The most potent antagonism was produced by\nE. faecalis HO 91. Purification and subsequent characterization by MALDI-TOF MS,\nEdman degradation and DNA-sequencing revealed that the antimicrobial compound was\nHiracin. The purified Hira cin was evaluated for antibacterial activity against 12\nmultiresistant enterococcal isolates from clinical samples. The results demonstrated that\nHira cin is highly effective towards enterococci which were resistant even to antibiotics\nfrom four distinct classes.\nConclusion: The present research addresses Hira cin as a promising alternative to\nconventional antibiotics in treatment of multiresistant enterococcal infections.
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