Biofield Treatment: An Alternative Approach to Combat Multidrug-Resistant Susceptibility Pattern of Raoultella ornithinolytica

What is it about?

Raoultella ornithinolytica is belongs to the family of Enterobacteriaceae, a Gram-negative encapsulated aerobic bacillus associated with bacteremia and urinary tract infections. As biofield therapy is increasingly popular in biomedical heath care, so present study aimed to evaluate the impact of Mr. Trivedi’s biofield treatment on antimicrobial sensitivity, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), biochemical study, and biotype number of multidrug resistant strain of R. ornithinolytica. Clinical sample of R. ornithinolytica was divided into two groups i.e. control and biofield treated which were analyzed for the above parameters using MicroScan Walk-Away® system on day 10 after treatment. Antimicrobial sensitivity assay results showed a significant increase (60.71%) in sensitivity pattern of antimicrobials i.e. changed from resistant to susceptible while 10.71% of tested antimicrobials changed from intermediate to susceptible as compared to control. MIC results showed a significant decrease in MIC values of 71.88% tested antimicrobials as compared to control. Biochemical reaction study showed 15.15% alteration in different biochemical such as cetrimide, cephalothin, kanamycin, and ornithine after biofield treatment as compared to control. A significant change in biotype number (7775 4370) was also observed with organism identified as Klebsiella oxytoca after biofield treatment as compared to control (7775 5372). Overall results conclude that biofield treatment could be used as complementary and alternative treatment strategy against multidrug resistant strain of R. ornithinolytica with respect to improve the sensitivity and reduce the MIC values of antimicrobials. Hence, it is assumed that biofield treatment might be a suitable cost effective treatment strategy in near future, which could have therapeutic value in patients suffering from multidrug resistant pathogens.

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Why is it important?

Genus Raoultella belongs to the family Enterobacteriaceae, mainly contains Gram-negative, aerobic, non-motile, capsulated, and facultative anaerobic bacilli [1]. Initially, genus Raoultella was classified in Klebsiella, further on the basis of 16S rRNA and rpoB genes study includes it in new genus Raoultella. It includes Raoultella ornithinolytica, R. electrica, R. planticola, and R. terrigena. R. ornithinolytica is widely distributed in aquatic flora, fishes and insects, but it was associated with histamine poisoning in fish [2]. Human infections are often less reported earlier, but different cases of bacteremia are reported due to R. terrigena [3], R. planticola [4] and R. ornithinolytica [5,6]. Although most of the infectious cases are often associated with underlying existing infection especially malignancies. However, other pathogenic cases such as urinary tract infection, soft issue infections in adults and neonatal infections are also reported [7]. Thus, this is very clear from the above reports that Raoultella genus acts as human pathogen and multidrug resistant (MDR) strain will cause a serious threat to human health causing pneumonia and other infections [8]. Broad spectrum antimicrobials and combinations therapies are the only treatment strategy to cure the infection of MDR. Antimicrobials are always associated with serious side effects [9]. Currently, no such alternative therapies apart from medicines are available against MDR microorganism infections, biofield treatment may be a new approach to improve the susceptibility pattern of R. ornithinolytica. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) places biofield therapy under subcategory of energy therapies as one of the five complementary medicine domain. It is scientifically preferred term for the biologically produced electromagnetic and subtle energy field that provides regulatory and communication functions within the organism. The cumulative effect of bio-magnetic and electric field that surrounds the human body is defined as biofield energy. However, the energy can exists in several forms such as kinetic, potential, electrical, magnetic, and nuclear. But human body has the power to produce measurable electric and magnetic signals [10,11]. Similarly, the human nervous system consists of the energy and chemical information in the form of electrical signals. Thus, human has the ability to harness the energy from environment or universe and can transmit into any living or nonliving object(s) around the globe. The objects always receive the energy and responding into useful way via biofield energy and the process is known as biofield treatment. Even every cell of human body will produce minute amount of magnetic and electric field, as it always covers with positive and negative charge in outer and inner cell wall respectively [12]. The biofield energy can be monitored by using electromyography (EMG), electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) [13]. Mr. Trivedi’s biofield treatment is well known and significantly studied in different fields such as altering the sensitivity pattern of different human pathogens [14-16]. It has been significantly studied in field of agriculture [17-19], biotechnology [20,21], and in material science [22-24].

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