Comparison of royal jelly effects with gentamicin and ceftriaxone on the growth of Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, in a laboratory environment

Abstract

objectives Royal jelly is a product of honey bee which has great food qualities and contains water, protein, lipid and minerals. Despite the vast studies done on royal jelly, some of its charac- teristics such as antimicrobial properties still is not clearly understood, and there are controversial reports about it. It is believed that these characteristics refer to the enhancement of the immune system and existence of some antibacterial elements in the product. Due to increasing resistance of microbes to different antibiotics, the need for other alternatives such as royal jelly is considered. In this study the antibacterial effect of royal jelly and two antibiotics (Gentamicin & Ceftriaxon ) is compared. methods Escherichia coil, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aeru- ginosa , Staphylococcus aureus were provided by microbiology reference laboratory, Tehran, Iran. Three set of 6 tubs were selected and 3 mils of culture media were added to each tubes. Two tubes of each set were used as positive and negative controls for. Four tubes of each set were selected and to each set of tubes Escherichia coil, Bacillus cereus , Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus were added. To each above mentioned sets of tubs Gentamicin and Ceftriaxone with 50, 100, 200 & 300 microgram/ml doses and royal jelly 50, 100, 200, 300 mg/ml doses were separately added. After 24 hours incubation period the growth of bacteria were estimated by cloudy appearance of the culture media in tubes. To confirm the accuracy of the test, the bacteria were also cultured in BA and EMB culture media and their MIC were measured afterwards. results Our experiment results showed that doses of 50 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml of royal jelly had no effect on the growth of cultured bacteria, but no bacteria growth was seen with 200 mg/ ml and 300 mg/ml of royal jelly. The MIC for Ceftriaxone on, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus Cereus, Escherichia coil and Staphylococcus aureus, were 200, 50, 50 & 200 mg/ml and for Gentamicin were 300, 50, 100 & 300 respectively. conclusion Royal jelly has equal and even more antibacterial effect on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus compared to Gentamicin and Ceftriaxone. Although Gentamicin and Ceftriaxone have lower MIC on Escherichia coli compared to royal jelly but since today most bacteria are considered to be resistant to vastly used old and new antibiotics with many side effects, the use of royal jelly and other immune enhancers materials with no side effects could be more useful, but needs to be studied much mor