EXPERIMENTALLY POTENT SYNERGISM RESULTING FROM COMBINATION OF THE ANTIBIOTIC STREPTOMYCIN WITH THE NON-ANTIBIOTIC DICYCLOMINE HYDROCHLORIDE
Prithviraj Karak Ph.D, Shauroseni Palchoudhuri M.Sc, Debalina Sinha Roy M.Sc, Musfiqua Mookerjee Ph.D, Bidisha Ghosh M.Sc, Sukhen Das Ph.D and Sujata G. Dastidar Ph.D*
ABSTRACT
The anticholinergic agent dicyclomine hydrochloride (Dc) had been found to possess highly significant antimicrobial action against a large variety of Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria. Simultaneously the drug Dc also revealed statistically significant protective capacity in mice challenged with a mouse virulent strain of salmonella. In this study Dc has been combined individually with several commonly known antibiotics to determine if any of the combination could result in synergism. The antibiotics were penicillin, ampicillin, chloramphenicol, tetracycline, streptomycin, gentamicin and ciprofloxacin. A total of 12 bacteria belonging to 9 different genera and fairly sensitive to Dc were found to be sensitive to most of the antibiotics only except erythromycin to which two microorganisms were resistant. Disc diffusion assay produced synergism of Dc with streptomycin, gentamicin, penicillin, ampicillin and erythromycin. Subsequently synergism between Dc and streptomycin was confirmed by determining the fractional inhibitory concentration (FIC) index with the help of checkerboard technique in microtitre trays. The FIC index was found to be 0.375 confirming synergism. Finally the protective capacity of the combination was evaluated in a mouse model in which the challenge bacterium was Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium NCTC 74. The combination of Dc and streptomycin exhibited statistically significant (p < 0.001) mouse protection and also resulted in reduction of invasive bacterial cells in internal organs. Such an observation may hopefully be developed as an alternative therapy for severe bacterial infections.
Keywords: Non-antibiotic, Synergism, Dicyclomine, FIC index, Streptomycin.
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