Polyherbal nano formulation: A potent antibiotic resistance breaker in bovine mastitis causing MDR pathogens

Abstract

Bovine mastitis (BM) is one of the leading causes of economic loss faced by the cattle rearing and dairy industry throughout the world. This is an inflammatory disease, which mostly affects dairy cows and is caused when mastitis bacteria spread to the udder and associated glands during the milking process. Bovine mastitis results in significant losses for dairy farmers by affecting the quality, yield, and composition of the milk. The veterinary treatment and replacement costs, in addition, to the increased zoonotic transfer potential of the mastitis bacteria to humans, further add to the economic and health burden, associated with this disease. Nanotechnology-based formulations can be effective in combating the complications associated with bovine mastitis as well as to protect dairy cattle from bovine mastitis infection, caused by drug-resistant pathogens. Green nanotechnology is a field of modern research that deals with the manipulation of size and structure at the nanoscale by using green sources. In this study, multidrug-resistant bacterial (MDR) species from bovine mastitis milk were isolated, identified, and sequenced. The developed polyherbal nano formulation (PHNF) was evaluated against the MDR strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas stutzeri by employing different antibacterial, antibiofilm assays and also explored its effect on the CTX-M-15 gene. PHNF was found to be very effective against the tested strains by observing decreased growth rate with potent bactericidal and anti-biofilm activity. PHNF treatment effectively suppressed the antibiotic-resistant gene CTX-M-15 present in K. pneumoniae and P. stutzeri. In the future, these PHNF can be formulated as a topical agent to control the bovine mastitis-causing bacteria and therefore, help reduce the cost of treatment of bovine mastitis and also prevent the spread of deadly zoonotic infections to consumers.