Antifungal activity of silver nanoparticles in combination with ketoconazole against Malassezia furfur

Javier Esteban Mussin,María De Los Ángeles Sosa,Gustavo Giusiano,Florencia Rojas,Nora Pellegri,María Virginia Roldán

doi:10.1186/s13568-019-0857-7

Abstract

Malassezia furfur is lipophilic and lipid-dependent yeast, inhabitant of human skin microbiota associated with several dermal disorders. In recent years, along with the advances in nanotechnology and the incentive to find new antimicrobial drugs, there has been a growing interest in the utilization of nanoparticles for the treatment of skin microbial infections. This work aimed to study the in vitro inhibitory activity of silver nanoparticles (AgNP) against 41 M. furfur clinical isolates, visualize the interaction between AgNP-Malassezia, evaluate the synergism with ketoconazole (KTZ) and to produce an antimicrobial gel of AgNP–KTZ. The synthesized AgNP were randomly distributed around the yeast surface and showed a fungicidal action with low minimal inhibitory concentration values. AgNP showed no antagonistic effect with KTZ. The broad-spectrum antimicrobial property with fungicidal action of AgNP and its accumulation in affected areas with a sustained release profile, added to the great antifungal activity of KTZ against Malassezia infections and other superficial mycoses, allowed us to obtain a gel based on carbopol formulated with AgNP–KTZ with the potential to improve the topical therapy of superficial malasseziosis, reduce the number of applications and, also, prevent the recurrence.

Highlights

Yeasts of Malassezia genus are normal inhabitants of the human skin microbiota and other warm-blooded vertebrates
The antimicrobial properties of silver have been recognized and used as a standard treatment for bacterial skin infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Aljuffali et al 2015)
a growing interest in silver nanoparticles (AgNP) were synthesized by a low cost simple continuous media (Roldán et al 2008)

Summary

Introduction

Yeasts of Malassezia genus are normal inhabitants of the human skin microbiota and other warm-blooded vertebrates. Since they are unable to synthesize fatty acids, all Malassezia species are lipophilic and most of them lipiddependent, requiring an external source of lipids. For this reason, they prevail in body areas rich in sebaceous glands (Boekhout et al 2010). KTZ is a fungistatic imidazole that inhibits the lanosterol 14α-demethylase, an enzyme that regulates the synthesis of ergosterol. The disruption of ergosterol biosynthesis alters cell membrane structure, compromising membrane integrity and permeability and interfering with cellular growth and reproduction.

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