Potential of Lactobacillus Strains with Antimicrobial Activity against Acinetobacter baummanii

Bacterial infection constitutes a major public health problem worldwide and excessive use of antimicrobials in health care settings leads to microbial resistance. Increasing antibiotic resistance of pathogens associated with Bacterial infections has also become a major therapeutic challenge for physicians. Thus development of alternative treatment protocols, such as the use of probiotics may help in countering alarming situation of drug resistant and multidrug resistant bacteria. Lactobacillus species bacteria which are one good prototype of probitic are considered useful in minimizing antimicrobial use. The aim of this research was to determine the antagonistic properties of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei isolated from the manually prepared buffalo milk curd against Acinetobacter baumannii causing wound infections in humans. Three hundred samples of wound infections were collected and processed for bacterial isolation and antimicrobial susceptibility testing following standard bacteriologic techniques & Vitec-II Campact system. The antibiotic susceptibility test was performed by the disk diffusion method, and antagonistic effect of Lactobacillus strains was investigated by well diffusion method. Total 500 pus samples were collected from patients with wound infection at Tertiary care hospital in Pondicherry, India and processed as CLSI guidelines and with help of Vitec-II campac system, 268 isolates were identified as Acinetobacter baumannii. Of these 268 isolates, a total of 109 strains of A. baumannii showed high resistance to tested antibiotics. Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei isolated from the manually prepared buffalo milk curd were tested for the antimicrobial inhibitory property against Acinetobacter baumannii. Lactobacillus acidophilus had antagonistic properties against A. baumannii. These results are in agreement with other published reports from different countries that indicate that infection control efforts may be achieved with Lactobacillus species. We believe that more attention should be paid to these areas, particularly to create a standardized approach.