OBJECTIVES The antioxidant tert-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is a food additive reported to have antibacterial activity, and may therefore have application in the healthcare setting. This study sought to characterize the antibacterial activity and mode of action of TBHQ and its oxidation product, tert-butylbenzoquinone (TBBQ). METHODS The stability of TBHQ/TBBQ was studied in buffer. Susceptibili...

Today, emerging and increasing resistance to antibiotics has become a threat to public health worldwide. Antimicrobial peptides have unique action mechanisms making them an attractive therapeutic prospect to be applied against resistant bacteria. However, the major drawback is related with their high hemolytic activity which cancels out the safety requirements for a human antibiotic. Therefore,...

Antimicrobial host defense peptides are produced by all complex organisms as well as some microbes and have diverse and complex antimicrobial activities. Collectively these peptides demonstrate a broad range of antiviral and antibacterial activities and modes of action, and it is important to distinguish between direct microbicidal and indirect activities against such pathogens. The structural ...

Fluoroquinolones are very important drugs in the clinical antibacterial arsenal; their success is principally due to their mode of action: the stabilisation of a gyrase-DNA intermediate (the cleavage complex), which triggers a chain of events leading to cell death. Microcin B17 (MccB17) is a modified peptide bacterial toxin that acts by a similar mode of action, but is unfortunately unsuitable ...

Although the combination of toluidine blue O (TBO) dye and laser light at a wavelength of 633 nm has a bactericidal effect, light from laboratory lasers can only be directed externally at a bacterial colony or suspension. In this study a novel delivery system guided the laser light to an 800-micrometer diameter spherical tip (an isotropic tip) from which light radiated producing a uniform spher...

Drug resistance is a challenge that can be addressed using nanotechnology. We focused on the resistance of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and investigated, using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), the behavior of a reference strain and of a multidrug resistant clinical strain, submitted to two antibiotics and to an innovative antibacterial drug (CX1). We measured the morphology, surface roughn...