Author(s)

Sung-Mi Choi¹, Eun-Jin Jang², Jeong-Dan Cha^3*

¹Department of Dental Hygiene, Daegu Health College, Daegu, South Korea.
²Department of Dental Technology, Daegu Health College, Daegu, South Korea.
³Department of Natural Products Research, Institute of Jinan Red Ginseng, Jinan, South Korea.

Fucoidan is a sulfated polysaccharide that is primarily extracted from brown seaweeds which has been broadly studied in recent years due to its numerous biological properties, including anticoagulant, antithrombotic, antitumor, and antiviral activities. In this study, fucoidan was evaluated against clinic isolated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) 1 - 20, either alone or with antibiotics, via broth dilution method and checkerboard and time kill assay. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs)/Minimum bactericidal concentrations (MBCs) values for the fucoidan against all the tested bacteria ranged between 64 - 512/256 - 2048 microg/mL, for ampicillin 32 - 1024/64 - 1024 microg/mL and for oxacillin 8 - 64/16 - 256 microg/mL respectively. Furthermore, the MIC and MBC were reduced to one half-eighth as a result of the combination of the fucoidan with antibiotics. 2 - 6 hours of treatment with 1/2 MIC of fucoidan with 1/2 MIC of antibiotics resulted from an increase of the rate of killing in units of CFU/mL to a greater degree than was observed with alone. These results suggest that fucoidan could be employed as a natural antibacterial agent against multi-drug bacteria.

Fucoidan, Antibacterial Activity, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Synergistic Effect, Minimum Inhibitory Concentrations (MICs), Minimum Bactericidal Concentrations (MBCs)

Choi, S. , Jang, E. and Cha, J. (2015) Synergistic Effect between Fucoidan and Antibiotics against Clinic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology, 6, 275-285. doi: 10.4236/abb.2015.64027.