The Lethality of KMnO4 & Penicillin on C. Perfringens

The anaerobic bacteria, Clostridium perfringens is the primary bacterial cause of gas gangrene, a life-threatening infection. The bacterial toxins induce severe myonecrosis by emitting gas under the skin. With standard treatment (antibiotics, surgical debridement, and HBO therapy), there is a 25-30% mortality rate and a 100% mortality rate when left untreated. Furthermore, patients with gas gangrene commonly undergo amputations, specifically limb amputations, which is a drastic, life-altering change. Recent studies in China hypothesized that combining potassium permanganate (KMnO4) with antibiotics may be a safer, less invasive, more effective treatment method due to the oxidizing nature of KMnO4. Due to dangers associated with handling C. perfringens, this study used a bacterium in the same family, C. butyricum as an alternative. Our objective was to determine whether a combination of potassium permanganate and antibiotics is in fact more effective than the current treatment methods used in the US. Four different concentrations of penicillin and five different concentrations of KMnO4 were applied individually to the bacteria and the samples incubated for 24 hours. Our initial aim was to determine the MIC50 of both treatments under anaerobic conditions and use those concentrations when we combine the two. The results for the penicillin trials were analyzed via absorbance and the results for the KMnO4 trials were analyzed using fluorescence. Penicillin had a drastic effect on the bacteria, killing approximately 43% of the bacteria with the highest dose used, 0.02 µg/mL. KMnO4 also seemingly had a significant effect on bacterial growth, inhibiting more than 50% of growth with our smallest concentration of 0.0016 g/mL. Our preliminary research showed promise both for moving on to the combination phase and for determining that there may be an alternative treatment for gas gangrene. Future research will consist of performing more trials using the same concentrations of KMnO4 and penicillin to ensure consistency and reproducibility prior to combining the two treatments. Furthermore, once we are certain that the C. butyricum trials have produced accurate results, we will move on to using C. perfringens.

Creator

• Raines, Morgan
• Waldron, Jonathan

Language

• English

Stichwort

• potassium permanganate (KMnO4)
• C. Perfringens
• gas gangrene
• penicillin

Date created

• 2020

Resource type

• Presentation

Source

• Sigma Zeta National Convention
• cassmp_1

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Bibliographic citation

•  Raines, M. and Waldron, J. (2019). The Lethality of KMnO4 & Penicillin on Clostridium Perfringens.