Research Scientists from the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), University of Ghana, have published a paper titled “Calcium Potentiated Carbapenem Effectiveness Against Resistant Enterobacter Species”, in the prestigious high-impact journal-SAGE.
The scientists are Dr. Abiola Isawumi, Molly Kukua Abban, Eunice Ampadubea Ayerakwa, and Dr. Lydia Mosi.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains a global health challenge, as bacteria display increasing resistance to last-resort antibiotics such as carbapenems. Enterobacter cloacae are evolving and developing a high level of resistance to carbapenems. With increasing AMR, the availability of antibiotics for treatment dwindles, hence a need to complement antibiotics to enhance activity or reduce the level of resistance.
In this paper, scientists have explored the use of calcium ions in attenuating bacterial resistance to carbapenems.
Results from this study show that E. cloacae strains displayed high levels of resistance to carbapenems, increasing the possibility of treatment failure. Challenging strains with calcium prior to antibiotic treatment led to a significant reduction in the level of resistance, indicating that calcium ions could affect bacterial strains during antibiotic activity leading to a reduction in the level of resistance.
Figure 1. Antimicrobial Resistance Profiles, Bacterial Standard Growth Curve and Growth Rate in the presence of carbapenems relative to the ATCC 25922 E. cloacae control; Percentage resistance of the bacterial strains to imipenem, meropenem, doripenem and ertapenem without calcium pre-treatment.
Figure 2. Antimicrobial Resistance Profiles, Bacterial Standard Growth Curve and Growth Rate in the presence of carbapenems relative to the ATCC 25922 E. cloacae control; Percentage resistance of the bacterial strains to imipenem, meropenem, doripenem and ertapenem with calcium pre-treatment.
This publication is open source and freely accessible at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/11786361221133728.
