• Guoqing Wan, Lingao Ruan, Yu Yin, Tian Yang, Mei Ge, and Xiaodong Cheng.
• School of Life Science and Technology, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing; Shanghai Laiyi Center for Biopharmaceutical R&D.
• Int J Nanomed. 2016 Jan 1; 11: 3789-800.

AbstractAcinetobacter baumannii resistance to carbapenem antibiotics is a serious clinical challenge. As a newly developed technology, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) show some excellent characteristics compared to older treatments, and are a candidate for combating A. baumannii infection. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. In this study, we combined AgNPs with antibiotics to treat carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (aba1604). Our results showed that single AgNPs completely inhibited A. baumannii growth at 2.5 μg/mL. AgNP treatment also showed synergistic effects with the antibiotics polymixin B and rifampicin, and an additive effect with tigecyline. In vivo, we found that AgNPs-antibiotic combinations led to better survival ratios in A. baumannii-infected mouse peritonitis models than that by single drug treatment. Finally, we employed different antisense RNA-targeted Escherichia coli strains to elucidate the synergistic mechanism involved in bacterial responses to AgNPs and antibiotics.

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