Selectively enhanced antibacterial effects and ultraviolet activation of antibiotics with ZnO nanorods against Escherichia coli.

In this paper, the selectively enhanced antibacterial effects of ZnO nanorods with several kinds of conventional medical antibiotics are investigated. Compares to gentamicin, clarithromycin and ofloxacin, ZnO nanorods could obviously achieve synergistic antibacterial effects with ceftriaxone against Escherichia coli (E. coli). Meanwhile, ultraviolet (UV) activation is adopted to induce higher antibacterial activity of ceftriaxone-ZnO nanorods than that of pure ceftriaxone or ZnO nanorods. The results of colony-forming capability test, infrared ray (IR) spectrum, and detection of reactive oxygen species (ROS) indicated that ceftriaxone may the facilitate the entry of ZnO nanorods into bacterial cell, and this effect would play an important role in mechanisms of such antibacterial behavior under the conditions of this study.