Enhanced Antibacterial Activity of Curcumin by Combination With Metal Ions

Abstract The rising bacterial infection severely threatens human health and has already become a worldwide issue. Safe, green and efficient antibiotics are urgently needed. Curcumin is well known as a natural and green food additive, and has effective biological and pharmaceutical activity. To overcome its hydrophobic disadvantage, here, tannic acid and metal coordination were used to coat curcumin nanoparticles (NPs) for the antibacterial application. On the one hand, the coating method produced a high drug loading content. On the other hand, the involvement of metal ions enhanced the bacterial inhibition efficiency compared to curcumin and metal ions alone. Especially for S. aureus, the minimum inhibitory concentration of copper containing complex NPs was 7.5 times lower than that curcumin alone. Thus, our research provides a natural and green antibiotics system to effectively prevent bacterial infections, and has potential to be widely produced in industry due to the naturally derived raw materials.