• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.158-168
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• 2023

Natural products have been used to mitigate the effects of cancer and infectious diseases, as they feature diverse bioactivities, such as antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory effects. Here, we chose 10 natural products that are well-known as pulmonary enhancers and investigated their bactericidal effects on Streptococcus pneumoniae. In the disk diffusion assay, the growth of S. pneumoniae was significantly regulated by G. fructus treatment regardless of extraction method used. We first adopted spraying as a novel delivery method for G. fructus. Interestingly, mice exposed to G. fructus three times a day for 2 weeks were resistant to S. pneumoniae intranasal infection (shown both through body weight loss and survival rates compared to the control group). Moreover, we confirmed that exposure to G. fructus regulated the colonization of the bacteria despite the sustained inflammation in the lung after exposure to S. pneumoniae, indicating that migrated inflammatory immune cells may involve a host defense mechanism against pulmonary infectious diseases. While a similar number of granulocytes (CD11b⁺Ly6C⁺Ly6G⁺), neutrophils (CD11b⁺Ly6C^intLy6G⁺), and monocytes (CD11b⁺Ly6C^intLy6G^-) were found between groups, a significantly increased number of alveolar macrophages (CD11b⁺CD11c^hiF4/80⁺) was detected in BAL fluids of mice pre-exposed to G. fructus at 5 days after S. pneumonia infection. Taken together, our data suggest that this usage of G. fructus can induce protective immunity against bacterial infection, indicating that facial spray may be helpful in enhancing the defense mechanism against pulmonary inflammation and in evaluating the efficacy of natural products as immune enhancers against respiratory diseases.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.820-827
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• 2023

Since COVID-19 began at the end of 2019, the wearing time of protective clothing used to prevent pathogenic bacteria and virus infection has increased, and the development of safe protective materials that are human-friendly and have antibacterial and antiviral functions has been required. In this study, we investigated the possibility of developing natural antibacterial protection materials using ethanol extract of the medicinal plant Zanthoxylum Piperitum DC. The antibacterial activity assay of the 80% ethanol extract of Z. piperitum DC leaves against various nosocomial infectious bacteria, using the disk diffusion method, showed that Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 13883, Salmonella typhimurium, and Aeromonas hydrophila are sensitive to the inhibitory action of the extract. The IC₅₀ values of the ethanol extract against S. aureus, K. pneumoniae, P. vulgaris and A. hydrophila were about 0.59 mg/ml, 0.50 mg/ml, 1.06 mg/ml, and 0.06 mg/ml, respectively. To determine whether the ethanol extract of Z. piperitum DC leaves can be applied to the development of antibacterial protective fabric, the ethanol extract was tested using a protective fabric from the KM Health Care Corp. using the JIS L1902-Absorption method. As a result, the bacteriostatic and bactericidal activity values of S. aureus ATCC 25923 and K. pneumoniae ATCC 13883 appeared to be more than 2.0 when treated with the ethanol extract at a concentration of 1% (w/v). Together, these results suggest that Z. piperitum DC leaves can be applied to develop natural antibacterial functional protective fabrics.