A perspective on the safety of parabens as preservatives in wound care products.

Antimicrobial and/or preservative ingredients incorporated in wound care products are subjected to certain safety restrictions. However, several of those agents, and paraben preservatives in particular, have been criticised. Conflicting reports on the potential of parabens to induce allergic contact dermatitis, and their assumed oestrogen-like activity, raised public health concerns about their overall safety.

Whey Protein Complexes with Green Tea Polyphenols: Antimicrobial, Osteoblast-Stimulatory, and Antioxidant Activities.

Polyphenols are known for their antimicrobial activity, whilst both polyphenols and the globular protein β-lactoglobulin (bLG) are suggested to have antioxidant properties and promote cell proliferation. These are potentially useful properties for a tissue-engineered construct, though it is unknown if they are retained when both compounds are used in combination. In this study, a range of different microbes and an osteoblast-like cell line (human fetal osteoblast, hFOB) were used to assess the combined effect of: (1) green tea extract (GTE), rich in the polyphenol epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), and (2) whey protein isolate (WPI), rich in bLG.

Novel injectable gellan gum hydrogel composites incorporating Zn- and Sr-enriched bioactive glass microparticles: High-resolution X-ray microcomputed tomography, antibacterial and in vitro testing.

Mineralization of hydrogel biomaterials is desirable to improve their suitability as materials for bone regeneration. In this study, gellan gum (GG) hydrogels were formed by simple mixing of GG solution with bioactive glass microparticles of 45S5 composition, leading to hydrogel formation by ion release from the amorphous bioactive glass microparticles. This resulted in novel injectable, self-gelling composites of GG hydrogels containing 20% bioactive glass.

Elucidation of the mechanism behind the potentiating activity of baicalin against Burkholderia cenocepacia biofilms.

Reduced antimicrobial susceptibility due to resistance and tolerance has become a serious threat to human health. An approach to overcome this reduced susceptibility is the use of antibiotic adjuvants, also known as potentiators. These are compounds that have little or no antibacterial effect on their own but increase the susceptibility of bacterial cells towards antimicrobial agents.

Pitfalls associated with evaluating enzymatic quorum quenching activity: the case of MomL and its effect on and biofilms.

Background: The enzymatic degradation of quorums sensing (QS) molecules (called quorum quenching, QQ) has been considered as a promising anti-virulence therapy to treat biofilm-related infections and combat antibiotic resistance. The recently-discovered QQ enzyme MomL has been reported to efficiently degrade different -acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) of various Gram-negative pathogens. Here we investigated the effect of MomL on biofilms formed by two important nosocomial pathogens, and .