Synergistic Effect of Curcumin and Tobramycinon the mexX Geneexpression in Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates

Abstract

till now there are few studies that evaluate the effect of curcuminon efflux pump gene expression, the aim of this study to investigating thecurcumin’s roleas efflux pump inhibitor against the 93 isolates of P. aeruginosacollected as identedby expert from laboratoryof Iraqi hospital/Baghdad during the period from September2023to December 2023.16S rRNA was employed to identify bacteria. For 40 isolates resistant to tobramycin, the results of agar dilution showed theminimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) values ranged between 32-2048 µg/ml.Using tobramycin with curcumin significantly enhanced the sensitivity (p≤ 0.05) of P.aeruginosa isolates to tobramycin. DNA extractions were conducted on all 40 P. aeruginosa isolates to confirm the mexX presence. After the treatment of bacterial cells with tobramycin, the antibiotic upregulated the mexXgene expression in P. aeruginosa but downregulated the expression of other isolates. The tobramycin with curcumin combination of upregulated mexXexpression in P. aeruginosa and downregulated the expression of others.Current findings show that the combination ofcurcumin and antibiotics inhibitsP. aeruginosa more effectively than antibiotics alone.