In vitro activity of furvin against multiresistant Gram negative bacteria

Abstract

There is a global emergency in the treatment of infectious diseases due to microorganisms, resistant to all or almost all available antimicrobial agents. Unfortunately, new antibacterial drug classes have not been developed to treat multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria in the last years. This situation encourages new research work, aimed to finding novel biologically active compounds. The goal of the present study was to isolate and identify gram-negative multidrug-resistant bacteria as well as to evaluate in vitro the antibacterial activity of furvina against these bacterial strains. Identification was performed by conventional biochemical methods. Resistance to antibacterial agents was determined by the agar diffusion method and the in vitro activity was evaluated quantitatively by broth macrodilution method following the specifications of the Clinical Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI). A total of 62 multidrug-resistant bacterial strains from 8 different genera were identified. The 59,67 % of the strains belonging to Acinetobacter genera and one Enterobacter cloacae strain were resistant to meropenem showing minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) higher than 4 μg/mL. All multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter spp. strains showed MIC values ranging from 8 to 32 μg/mL against furvina, while 30 % of them were resistant to meropenem having MIC values between 16 and 256 μg/mL. Finally, furvina displayed good in vitro antibacterial activity against all multidrug-resistant Gram negative bacteria tested.