Synergistic antibacterial effect of Bi2S3 nanospheres combined with ineffective antibiotic gentamicin against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

In this paper, Bi2S3 nanospheres with size of 212 nm were prepared by a simple hydrothermal process. The selectively enhanced antibacterial effects of Bi2S3 nanospheres with three classes of ineffective antibiotics, beta-lactam (cefuroxime, CXM; cefotaxime, CTX and piperacillin, PIP), quinolone (ciprofloxacin, CIP) and aminoglycoside (gentamicin, GEN) against clinical isolated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were investigated for the first time. GEN shows significantly synergistic growth inhibition against MRSA when combined with Bi2S3 nanospheres, while CXM, CTX, PIP and CIP do not. Raman spectroscopy and Z potential studies reveal that Bi2S3 could interact with GEN and the combination showed small electronegativity, which probably induced the increase of GEN content in cytoplasm of bacteria. Furthermore, the combination of Bi2S3 nanospheres and GEN can destroy the bacterial membrane function and induce more bactericidal reactive oxygen generation than that of Bi2S3 or GEN alone. The cytotoxicity test indicates that the combination of Bi2S3 and GEN presented low toxicity to human normal hepatocyte LO2. This work shows that Bi2S3 nanospheres can be used to enhance the action of ineffective antibiotic GEN against MRSA, thus strengthening the antibiotic capacity for fighting MRSA infections. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.