Background Multiple antibiotic resistance continues to be a problem of our time. For this reason, studies of multi-drug resistance continue increasingly, either by the discovery of new antibiotics or understanding the resistance mechanisms and propose solutions to prevent resistance. Bacteria have strong resistance mechanisms and efflux pumps are just one of them. Antibiotic or any substance is pumped from inside the cell to the outside of the cell by efflux pumps. Therefore, there is little or no concentration of the substance left inside the cell. To prevent this, inhibitors have been developed, but their clinical use is not yet suitable due to toxicity problems. Inhibitors derived from natural origins that do not pose a toxicity problem are under investigation. In this study, efflux pump inhibitor potential of macrofungi was studied in vitro and positive results were obtained.
Methods In this study, acetone extract of Fomes fomentarius macrofungus was used to observe its efflux pump inhibition in some clinically isolated multi-drug resistant (MDR) Escherichia coli strains. For inhibition, antibiotics were selected according to the resistance profiles of the MDR strains and treated with acetone extract. FTIR analysis was performed to understand the effective results obtained, the interpretation of the combined use of antibiotics and extracts, and the mechanism of action.
Results According to the results of the FTIR analysis, it has been observed that there are differences in the peaks obtained and these differences are mainly in the fatty acids, phospholipids, DNA/RNA, proteins, polysaccharides and fingerprint regions.
Conclusions According to the observed data, the extracts caused changes in the DNA/RNA, protein and fatty acids regions, and these changes can be used in understanding of the mechanism of action of the extract on E. coli strains. This study lead several preliminary results, which needed further studies to understand their mechanism of action in details.
Acknowledgment The authors would like to thank the Kastamonu University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Department under the Grant No. KÜ-BAP01/2021-47 for the support.
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