Abstract
Bismuth is a heavy metal with antibacterial properties that has a long history of medicinal use. The results reported here suggest that bismuth(III) (chelated with deferiprone) could be used in aquaculture systems to treat bacterial disease outbreaks, greatly reducing antibiotic use. We tested bismuth susceptibility in a collection of aquaculture bacterial pathogens. In the presence of bismuth concentrations ranging from 1.3 to 13 µM, most bacteria started showing a drastic decrease in their growth ability, although with high inter- and intraspecific variability. The minimal inhibitory concentrations of bismuth ranged from 13 to more than 780 µM, depending on bacterial species and strain. The results of in vivo assays suggest that low concentrations of bismuth could be especially effective to treat vibriosis caused by Vibrio anguillarum, since bismuth greatly reduced mortality in experimentally infected fish without any observable side effects. A bismuth therapy, alone or combined with other antimicrobials, could contribute to reduce the use of antibiotics in aquaculture.
Highlights
Bismuth is a heavy metal with antibacterial properties that has a long history of medicinal use
P. damselae subsp. piscicida showed the bacteria showed a drastic decrease in their growth ability
To study whether siderophore production could affect the bismuth susceptibility of the bacteria tested, the growth achieved in presence of increasing bismuth concentrations by siderophore-producing strains was compared with the corresponding siderophore-deficient derivative mutants (Figure 2)
Summary
Bacteria were routinely grown in Tryptic Soy Broth or Agar (Pronadisa, Madrid, Spain) supplemented with 1% NaCl (TSB-1 or TSA-1 respectively) at 25 ◦ C. All strains used in this work were maintained into vials of TSB-1 with 15% glycerol and stored at −80 ◦ C. A fresh culture was prepared from these samples before each assay. All strains belong to the authors’ laboratory strain collection and have been isolated from different fish or mollusk species, except reference strains. 2 Reference strains obtained from ATCC and CECT culture collections All strains belong to the authors’ laboratory strain collection and have been isolated from different fish or mollusk species, except reference strains. 2 Reference strains obtained from ATCC and CECT culture collections
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