Low-Temperature Gas Plasma Combined with Antibiotics for the Reduction of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm Both In Vitro and In Vivo.

Li Guo,Wang Xi,Yu Qi,Hailan Chen,Xusong Chen,Dingxin Liu,Ruobing Xu,Jingye Zhang,Lu Yang,Gulimire Niyazi,Jianbao Zheng,Michael G Kong,Xiaohua Wang

doi:10.3390/life11080828

Abstract

Biofilm infections in wounds seriously delay the healing process, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of wound infections. In addition to inactivating micro-organisms, low-temperature gas plasma can restore the sensitivity of pathogenic microbes to antibiotics. However, the combined treatment has not been applied to infectious diseases. In this study, low-temperature gas plasma treatment promoted the effects of different antibiotics on the reduction of S. aureus biofilms in vitro. Low-temperature gas plasma combined with rifampicin also effectively reduced the S. aureus cells in biofilms in the murine wound infection model. The blood and histochemical analysis demonstrated the biosafety of the combined treatment. Our findings demonstrated that low-temperature gas plasma combined with antibiotics is a promising therapeutic strategy for wound infections.

Highlights

Skin infections represent one of the most common infectious diseases, and microbial infections seriously prevent or delay the healing process [1,2,3]
The gaseous reactive species produced by the surface discharge plasmas with working gas of helium and 1% air was conducted by optical emission spectrometry (OES)
The spectrum lines of metastable He were identified. The interaction of these gaseous RONS with aqueous solutions on the surface of biofilms or wounds could induce the production of aqueous reactive species, which directly reacted with the biomolecules and produced the biological effects

Summary

Introduction

Skin infections represent one of the most common infectious diseases, and microbial infections seriously prevent or delay the healing process [1,2,3]. Staphylococcus aureus especially methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), is one of the most frequent causes of skin infections [3,4,5,6,7]. S. aureus cells generally form biofilms on infected skin tissues and are not eradicated [8,9]. Biofilms formed by aggregated microbial cells are surrounded by a self-produced extracellular polymeric matrix made of proteins, DNA, and polysaccharides, and adhere to a surface, such as the surfaces of living tissues [10,11]. Skin tissues infected with biofilms are generally treated by surgical incision and debridement, topical antimicrobials, administration of antibiotics, or a combination of these treatments [15]. Surgical incision and debridement probably damage the uninfected skin tissues, while the effect of antibiotic treatment is poor and high amounts of antibiotics cause cytotoxicity [16]. Developing an effective and safe treatment for biofilm reduction is a challenging issue in the therapy of wound infections

Methods

Results

Conclusion