European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

NANOSECOND PULSED ELECTRIC FIELD INHIBITS GROWTH IN PSEUDOMONAS AERUGINOSA

Hala Moustafa Ahmed* and Mohamed Samieh Nasr El din

ABSTRACT

Objective: Nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEFs) have great potential for modern biotechnological and new medical applications. This paper shows the effect of nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which could imply a durable change in protein expressions of surviving bacteria that might lead to increase pathogenicity. Methods and Results: The effects of nsPEF with Electric pulse duration of (60x10-9s) with a rise time of (20x10-9s), a high voltage of (2x104V) and a repetition frequency of (0.5Hz) on bacteria viability. One log10 reduction in bacterial counts was achieved at field strength of (107 V m-1) with a train of 500 successive pulses of (60x10-9s). To observe a possible change in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, studies were performed for differential protein expressions using gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). As all the CFU were not investigated by this method, antibiograms were used to a larger extent to show that after the treatment, antibiotics were still able to neutralize these germs and if not, the nsPEF could act on naked DNA by expressed proteins that might reduce the sensibility of the bacterium by overexpressing or modifying the tridimensional structure of the target for a given antibiotic. The former frequency enhances the microorganism growth by 29 % and the DNA structure of the bacteria didn't change, while the later frequency caused inhibition in the microbial activity by 52% and pronounced changes in the DNA structure occurred. Conclusions: The results tend to show that nsPEFs are able to inactivate bacteria and have probably no serious impact in Pseudomonas aeruginosa protein patterns.

Keywords: nsPEFs - Pseudomonas aeruginosa–antibiotic.