Traditional Chinese Medicine is an Alternative Therapeutic Option for Treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infections.

Zheng Pang,Qingjun Zhu

doi:10.3389/fphar.2021.737252

Abstract

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen causing life-threatening infections in cystic fibrosis patients and immunocompromised individuals, and it is a leading cause of nosocomial infections associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Treatment of P. aeruginosa infections is challenging due to the antibiotic resistance to most of the conventional antibiotics. Development of alternative therapeutic options is urgently demanded for the patients who have antibiotic-resistant infections. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a clinical history of thousands of years for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in China, taking advantages of improving clinical outcomes, producing less side effects, inhibiting pathogen, and modulating host immunity. Recent research has revealed a variety of natural products derived from TCM showing significant antimicrobial effects on antibiotic-resistant strains of P. aeruginosa alone or combined with antibiotics in vitro or in animal models, suggesting that TCM is a promising complementary and alternative therapeutic approach for treatment of chronic P. aeruginosa infections. This review summarizes the recent findings attempting to dissect the mechanisms of TCM combating P. aeruginosa infections and highlights the molecular targets of TCM on P. aeruginosa and host.

Highlights

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, aerobic bacterium that is commonly found in soil and aqueous environments, and is capable of surviving in harsh conditions with minimum nutrition requirement owing to its numerous metabolic pathways and regulatory genes (Moradali et al, 2017)
The bacterial efflux pumps expelling a broad spectrum of antibiotics from the cell can greatly contribute to multidrug resistance, and they can be classified into five families: resistance-nodulationdivision (RND) family, major facilitator superfamily (MFS), ATP-binding cassette (ABC) superfamily, small multidrug resistance (SMR) family, and multidrug and toxic compound extrusion (MATE) family (Sun J. et al, 2014)
Antibiotic resistance has led to a significant challenge for treatment of P. aeruginosa infections in clinical settings

Summary

Introduction

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, aerobic bacterium that is commonly found in soil and aqueous environments, and is capable of surviving in harsh conditions with minimum nutrition requirement owing to its numerous metabolic pathways and regulatory genes (Moradali et al, 2017). TCM has been reported to be capable of effectively controlling P. aeruginosa infections through suppression of quorum sensing (QS)(Wei et al, 2020), inhibition of biofilm (Fu et al, 2017), bactericidal effects (Liu et al, 2013), and modulation of host immunity (Hou et al, 2016) (Figure 1).

Results

Conclusion