The Differential Effects of Anesthetics on Bacterial Behaviors

Abstract

Volatile anesthetics have been in clinical use for a long period of time and are considered to be promiscuous by presumably interacting with several ion channels in the central nervous system to produce anesthesia. Because ion channels and their existing evolutionary analogues, ion transporters, are very important in various organisms, it is possible that volatile anesthetics may affect some bacteria. In this study, we hypothesized that volatile anesthetics could affect bacterial behaviors. We evaluated the impact of anesthetics on bacterial growth, motility (swimming and gliding) and biofilm formation of four common bacterial pathogens in vitro. We found that commonly used volatile anesthetics isoflurane and sevoflurane affected bacterial motility and biofilm formation without any effect on growth of the common bacterial pathogens studied here. Using available Escherichia coli gene deletion mutants of ion transporters and in silico molecular docking, we suggested that these altered behaviors might be at least partly via the interaction of volatile anesthetics with ion transporters.

Cutaneous Thermal Injury Modulates Blood and Skin Metabolomes Differently in a Murine Model

“…Assessment of rapid metabolic changes 46 in the background of data by using the control sham-treated group at each time point is essential when using mouse metabolic models. Variations in sham-treated mice seen here demonstrate the net sum of multiple metabolome-modulating factors from the known mice fast metabolism 46 and environmental factors related to unavoidable procedure steps, which involves temperature changes, 47 animal handling, 46 , 48 use of injectables, 48 , 49 hair removal, use of topical antiseptics, 49 and the asynchronous time of procedure performance which coincides with varied metabolomic states due to known effects of circadian clock on metabolism. 50–53 Additional precautions in analyzing data by starting with sublists of SMMs prepared by subtracting SMMs found in sham-treated animals, or cross-examining pathways after analysis of complete data sets to exclude pathways identified in sham-treated animals were essential to ensuring the robustness of results.…”

The Mechanisms of Sevoflurane-Induced Neuroinflammation

“…It is worth noting that Chamberlain et al (2017) provided a new perspective on the influence of sevoflurane on bacterial behavior, revealing that sevoflurane at clinically relevant concentrations (i.e., 1.5% and 3%) reduced Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa swimming, and conversely enhanced the biofilm formation of Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis, which are the important behaviors in bacteria for liquid mobility and consequent antibiotic resistance. This study also provides a new orientation to evaluate the potential impact of sevoflurane on gut bacteria, rather than focusing on the abundance and diversity of the intestinal microbiome.…”

The Brain Microbiota as It Relates to the Orch OR Theory of Consciousness

“…In designing an experiment to prove Orch OR, Hameroff proposes to expose the brain to anesthetic gases and observe whether dampening of quantum interference beats in tubulin and microtubules occurs (Hameroff, 2021). However, volatile anesthetics affect bacterial functions such as motility, biofilm formation and signal transduction (Chamberlain et al, 2017). Of particular significance are the effects on biofilm formation since this phenomenon is paradigmatic of the so-called microbial intelligence (Westerhoff et al, 2014).…”