Guo Li, Xu Ruobing, Zhao Yiming, Liu Dingxin, Liu Zhijie, Wang Xiaohua, Chen Hailan, Kong Michael G
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, Center for Plasma Biomedicine, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Front Microbiol. 2018 Mar 23;9:537. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00537. eCollection 2018.
Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) is a major cause of serious nosocomial infections, and recurrent MRSA infections primarily result from the survival of persister cells after antibiotic treatment. Gas plasma, a novel source of ROS (reactive oxygen species) and RNS (reactive nitrogen species) generation, not only inactivates pathogenic microbes but also restore the sensitivity of MRSA to antibiotics. This study further found that sublethal treatment of MRSA with both plasma and plasma-activated saline increased the antibiotic sensitivity and promoted the eradication of persister cells by tetracycline, gentamycin, clindamycin, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, rifampicin, and vancomycin. The short-lived ROS and RNS generated by plasma played a primary role in the process and induced the increase of many species of ROS and RNS in MRSA cells. Thus, our data indicated that the plasma treatment could promote the effects of many different classes of antibiotics and act as an antibiotic sensitizer for the treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria involved in infectious diseases.
耐甲氧西林金黄色葡萄球菌（MRSA）是严重医院感染的主要原因，复发性MRSA感染主要源于抗生素治疗后持留菌的存活。气体等离子体是一种产生活性氧（ROS）和活性氮（RNS）的新来源，不仅能使致病微生物失活，还能恢复MRSA对抗生素的敏感性。本研究进一步发现，用等离子体和等离子体激活盐水对MRSA进行亚致死处理，可提高抗生素敏感性，并促进四环素、庆大霉素、克林霉素、氯霉素、环丙沙星、利福平及万古霉素对持留菌的清除。等离子体产生的短寿命ROS和RNS在这一过程中起主要作用，并诱导MRSA细胞中多种ROS和RNS增加。因此，我们的数据表明，等离子体处理可增强多种不同类抗生素的作用，并作为抗生素增敏剂用于治疗传染病中涉及的耐药菌。
