Anti-Tuberculosis Activity of Pediococcus acidilactici Isolated from Young Radish Kimchi against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a highly contagious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It affects about 10 million people each year and is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide. About 2 to 3 billion people (equivalent to 1 in 3 people in the world) are infected with latent tuberculosis. Moreover, as the number of multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant, and totally drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis continues to increase, there is an urgent need to develop new anti-tuberculosis drugs that are different from existing drugs to combat antibiotic-resistant M. tuberculosis. Against this background, we aimed to develop new anti-tuberculosis drugs using probiotics. Here, we report the anti-tuberculosis effect of Pediococcus acidilactici PMC202 isolated from young radish kimchi, a traditional Korean fermented food. Under coculture conditions, PMC202 inhibited the growth of M. tuberculosis. In addition, PMC202 inhibited the growth of drug-sensitive and -resistant M. tuberculosisinfected macrophages at a concentration that did not show cytotoxicity and showed a synergistic effect with isoniazid. In a 2-week, repeated oral administration toxicity study using mice, PMC202 did not cause weight change or specific clinical symptoms. Furthermore, the results of 16S rRNA-based metagenomics analysis confirmed that dysbiosis was not induced in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid after oral administration of PMC202. The anti-tuberculosis effect of PMC202 was found to be related to the reduction of nitric oxide. Our findings indicate that PMC202 could be used as an anti-tuberculosis drug candidate with the potential to replace current chemicalbased drugs. However, more extensive toxicity, mechanism of action, and animal efficacy studies with clinical trials are needed.

Exploring the potential of Lactocaseibacillus rhamnosus PMC203 in inducing autophagy to reduce the burden of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

“…Furthermore, we can conclude from these results that PMC203 strain affects macrophages results in increased antituberculosis effect. These observations are consistent with some previous studies demonstrating that specific probiotic bacteria can enhance the antimycobacterial activity of macrophages [ 6 , 76 ].…”

“…Considering the circumstances above, various approaches are being explored to combat this lethal pathogen [ 5 ]. In this context, probiotics have emerged as one of the innovative ways of treating tuberculosis [ 6 ] due to their established effectiveness against various infectious diseases [ 7 ].…”

Beneficial features of pediococcus: from starter cultures and inhibitory activities to probiotic benefits

“…Probiotic properties of pediococci have been successfully proposed for humans and other animals with the aim of immunomodulation, control of pathogens, improved recovery after COVID-19, antibiotic therapy and improved health status (Table 1). Deep analysis of the probiotic features of pediococci was subject to research projects, in which beneficial roles of strains belonging to the genus Pediococcus were investigated, including their role in immunomodulation (Kim et al 2021;Shan et al 2021;Shweta et al 2021), growth improvement of farm animals (Castex et al 2021;Liu et al 2022;Wang et al 2022;Wanna et al 2021), reduction of the incidence of respiratory tract infections and the management of lactose intolerance (Chang et al 2020;Otunba et al 2021), resistance to infections (Li et al 2021; Villagran-de la Mora et al 2019;Yoon et al 2021), infantile colic treatment (Chen et al 2001), anti-obesity properties (Barathikannan et al 2022), post COVID-19 recovery of the patience (Gutiérrez-Castrellón et al 2022).…”