Capsaicin Potently Blocks Salmonella typhimurium Invasion of Vero Cells

Abstract

Salmonella typhimurium (S. typhimurium) is one of the major food and waterborne bacteria that causes several health outbreaks in the world. Although there are few antibiotics against this bacterium, some of these drugs are challenged with resistance and toxicity. To mitigate this challenge, our group explored the ethnomedicinal/herbalism knowledge about a certain spice used in Northern Ghana in West Africa against bacterial and viral infection. This plant is Capsicum chinense (C. chinense). The plant is one of the commonest food spices consumed across the world. The seed of the plant contains both capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin. Apart from capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin, other major capsaicinoids in C. chinense include nordihydrocapsaicin, homodihydrocapsaicin, and homocapsaicin. In this pilot work, we investigated the antibacterial activity of pure capsaicin and capsaicin extract obtained from C. chinense against S. typhimurium in vitro. Capsaicin extract showed potent inhibition of S. typhimurium growth at concentrations as low as 100 ng/mL, whereas pure capsaicin comparatively showed poorer inhibition of bacteria growth at such a concentration. Interestingly, both capsaicin extract and pure capsaicin were found to potently block a S. typhimurium invasion of the Vero cell in vitro. Taken together, we believed that capsaicin might work synergistically with dihydrocapsaicin or the other capsaicinoids to inhibit S. typhimurium growth, whereas individually, capsaicin or dihydrocapsaicin could potently block the bacteria entry and invasion of Vero cells.

CBD resistantSalmonellastrains are susceptible to Epsilon 34 phage tailspike protein

“…The initial cloning of the E34 TSP gene into Pet30a-LIC has been described elsewhere ( Ayariga et al, 2022 ). Verification of a cloned insert was obtained by PCR analysis via 0.8 % agarose gel electrophoresis using gene-specific primers.…”

“…This study employs the tailspike proteins (TSP) of epsilon 34 (E34) phage that was previously expressed and purified by Ayariga et al, 2022 in combination with CBD to understand its interactions with CBD-resistant Salmonella typhimurium and Salmonella newington . In this work, we performed plate assays, fluorescence microscopy, and growth kinetic studies to determine the antibacterial activity of CBD extracted from C. sativa in combination with E34 TSP on resistant strains of S. typhimurium and S. newington .…”

<em>Cannabis sativa</em> CBD Extract Exhibits Synergy with Broad-Spectrum Antibiotics against <em>Salmonella typhimurium</em>

“…To examine the antibacterial activity of antibiotic-CBD cotreatment the live-dead assay was utilized with SYTO-9 (Invitrogen, Waltham, MA, US) and propidium iodine (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) following protocols published by Ayariga et al (2022) [38]. S. typhimurium was grown overnight then diluted to an OD600 of 0.2 using LB broth.…”

Proteolytic Analysis of Epsilon 34 Phage Tailspike protein indicates Partial Sensitivity to Proteinase K

“…Unlike trypsin, proteinase K goes after the peptide bond adjacent to the carboxyl group of aliphatic and aromatic amino acids with blocked alpha amino groups. This protease is stable over a wide pH range (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12), with a pH optimum of pH 8.0 [30].…”

“…Salmonella has been demonstrated to cause several acute and chronic infections in humans [1] . These bacteria is known to be responsible for over 1.2 million illnesses in the US each year [2, 3, 4, 5] . Salmonella species are prone to acquiring resistance to various classes of antibiotics this sparks the need to look for methods of treating salmonella related infections other than the use of antibiotics, thus calling for the application of bacteriophages to manage, control and treat bacterial infections [6, 7] .…”