The World Health Organization identified antimicrobial resistance as a severe and rapidly growing threat to global health that could undermine decades of progress in combating infectious diseases and preventing healthcare related infections. The true cost of antibiotic resistance will be 300 million premature deaths and up to $100 trillion in global economic losses by 2050. The declining repertoire of useful drugs motivates the need to identify novel approaches to limit the use and maintain effectiveness of antimicrobials/antibiotics. We showed that a phenolic rich extract from maple syrup (PRMSE) can make disease-causing bacteria more susceptible to common antibiotics. PRMSE was obtained by solvent extraction of commercial maple syrup. Our tests showed that PRMSE gave a major boost to the commonly used antibiotics, ciprofloxacin and carbenicillin, in killing Gram-negative clinical strains of Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Amongst the phenolic constituents of PRMSE, catechol exhibited strong synergy with the antibiotics. PRMSE also acted synergistically with antibiotics in inhibiting and destroying biofilms, which are common in difficult-to-treat infections, such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections. This strong synergy between PRMSE and selected antibiotics resulted in up to a 97% decrease in the amount of antibiotic needed to halt bacterial growth. Thus, PRMSE can be used as an antibiotic synergizer/potentiator for treatment of different types of bacterial infections. The mechanisms for the observed synergy of PRMSE with antibiotics will be discussed. The proposed synergism-based treatment may expand the spectrum of existing antimicrobials, prevent the emergence of resistant strains, and minimize potential cytotoxicity due to high antibiotic doses.

Phenolic rich maple syrup extracts synergize with antibiotics

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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