Beneficial Microbes: Roles in the Era of Antimicrobial Resistance

Abstract

The upsurge of resistance in classes of antibiotics in varied bacterial species has increased the search for alternatives to antibiotics in bacterial infections. However, one alternative is the beneficial bacteria in foods, environment and gut. Probiotics is now being embraced as an alternative strategy to combat antibiotic resistant pathogens. A newer application is gut microbiota in its healthy state combating pathogenic and antibiotic resistant microbes. There have been numerous applications of beneficial bacteria against different infectious agents. This article describes the concept of beneficial microbes as antimicrobial agents with current applications as antimicrobial agents, various applications in the human gut with future directions.

Viability of lactic acid bacteria in different components of Ogi with anti diarrhoeagenic E. coli activities

“…The resistance of diarrhoeagenic E. coli to antibiotics has been ascribed to the misuse or under-use of antibiotics most especially ampicillin, chloramphenicol and sulphamethoxazoletrimetroprim [23,24]. Fermented foods can have an inhibitory effect on the diarrhoeagenic E. coli which could be due to different mechanisms of action of the LAB present in the fermented food [5,25]. These inhibit the growth of the pathogenic organism and the inhibitory effect is supported by a decrease in pH hence increase in acidity of the environment.…”

“…The observed activities could be due to inhibitory compounds produced by lactobacilli e.g. organic acids, diacetyl, hydrogen peroxide, nisin, lactic acid and bacteriocins [25,27,28]. George and Anosike [17] also isolated three LAB from Omidun and showed their antimicrobial effect on some test microorganisms and Ayeni and Ayeni, [29] reported that inoculated enteric pathogen was inhibited by LAB after 24 -48 h contact time.…”