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The Synergistic Effects of Green Tea Polyphenols and Antibiotics against Potential Pathogens

Green tea is an orally ingested beverage popular in Asian and Western communities. The tea is derived from an herbal plant Camellia sinensis. Some studies have shown that green tea has several medical benefits, some of which include reduction in cholesterol level, protection against cardio-vascular diseases, cancer, etc. And its leaves contain many polyphenolic compounds such as (-)-epicatechin (EC), (-)-epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), (-)-epigallocatechin (EGC), and (-)epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). These polyphenol compounds have been implicated to have distinct properties that combat the harmful effects of cell proliferation. They contain certain anti-viral and antibacterial properties that inhibit growth.

In this study, 1% green tea and modified lipophilic green tea polyphenols (GTP and LTP) were used in combination with the most commonly prescribed antibiotics to study their effects on gram-positive, gram-negative, and acid-fast bacteria. Six microorganisms in stock were constantly maintained and utilized in the experiment: the gram positive bacteria were Staphylococcus epidermidis, Bacillus megaterium; the gram negative bacteria were Escherichia coli, Serratia marcescens, Enterobacter aerogenes; and the acid-fast bacterium was Mycobacterium smegmatis.

The results indicated that 1% GTP and 1% LTP provided different synergistic effects on several antibiotics in various bacteria. It was found that 1% GTP works the best synergistically against Enterobacter aerogenes, making the resistant strainsusceptible to 8 out of 12 antibiotics used. 1% LTP worked the best on Escherichia coli and was able to convert 7 antibiotic resistant categories to susceptible. In addition, 1% LTP was also able to inhibit the growth of Serratia marcescens synergistically with 3 antibiotics.

In conclusion, these results suggested that 1% GTP and 1% LTP provided beneficial effects on selected antibiotics against microbial growth and are able to reverse the antibiotic resistance to susceptible. And green tea polyphenols could serve as natural alternatives to combat against antibiotic resistance pathogens. In addition, pure hydrophilic green tea polyphenol (GTP) such as EGCG and pure lipophilic tea compound EGCG-stearate should be used to further evaluate the efficacy of the synergism of these polyphenols on different antibiotics.

Article by Bobak Haghjoo, et al, from USA.

Full access: http://mrw.so/1UZ3tR

Image by Kayleigh Karr, from Flickr-cc.

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