RESEARCH ARTICLE


In Vitro Inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus (ATCC® 6538™) by Artemether-Lumefantrine Tablets: A Comparative Study of Three Dosage Strengths



Opoku Solomon1, *, Nyanor Isaac2
1 Department of Quality Control, Entrance Pharmaceuticals and Research Centre, No. 16 Okpoi Gonno, Spintex Road, Post Office Box CT 10805, Accra, Ghana
2 Sickle Pan Africa Research Consortium, Kumasi Centre for Sickle Cell Disease, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi, Ghana


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Creative Commons License
© 2018 Solomon and Isaac.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Quality Control, Entrance Pharmaceuticals and Research Centre, No. 16 Okpoi Gonno, Spintex Road, Post Office Box CT 10805, Accra, Ghana; Tel: +233205090159; E-mail: slmnopoku@gmail.com


Abstract

Purpose:

Antibiotics are progressively failing in the fight against infections due to S. aureus because the bacterium has an outstanding ability to acquire multi-antibiotic resistance and become resistant to most antibiotics. Multi-drug resistant S. aureus poses a major threat to the foundation upon which standard antibacterial chemotherapy stands, hence the need to consider non-antibiotic solutions to manage invasive bacterial infections. This study investigated the inhibitory activities of three dosage strengths of artemether-lumefantrine tablets against Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus (ATCC® 6538™) and determined the minimum concentrations of the tablets that are able to completely inhibit growth of the bacterium in vitro.

Methods:

The agar dilution and broth macrodilution techniques were used to determine the susceptibility of the Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus (ATCC® 6538™) strain to artemether-lumefantrine 20/120mg, 40/240mg and 80/480mg tablets.

Results:

The most active inhibitor was artemether-lumefantrine 80/480mg tablet with a minimum inhibitory concentration value of 2.5mg/mL while artemether-lumefantrine 20/120mg and 40/240mg tablets exhibited moderate but equal activities against the test strain.

Conclusions:

The study has revealed that artemether-lumefantrine, an antimalarial drug, also has anti-staphylococcal properties and inhibits S. aureus in vitro. This study presents the first report on the in vitro activity of artemether-lumefantrine tablet against S. aureus and suggests the need to consider it as an alternative in the treatment of staphylococcus infections.

Keywords: Minimum inhibitory concentrations, Multi-antibiotic resistance, Artemether-lumefantrine, Test strain, S. aureus, staphylococcus infections.