Lamas Freire, AlexandreArteaga, VicenteRegal López, PatriciaVázquez Belda, Beatriz IsabelMiranda López, José ManuelCepeda Sáez, AlbertoFranco Abuín, Carlos Manuel2020-11-262020-11-262020Lamas, A.; Arteaga, V.; Regal, P.; Vázquez, B.; Miranda, J.M.; Cepeda, A.; Franco, C.M. Antimicrobial Activity of Five Apitoxins from Apis mellifera on Two Common Foodborne Pathogens. Antibiotics 2020, 9, 367http://hdl.handle.net/10347/23828Antimicrobial resistance is one of today’s major public health challenges. Infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria have been responsible for an increasing number of deaths in recent decades. These resistant bacteria are also a concern in the food chain, as bacteria can resist common biocides used in the food industry and reach consumers. As a consequence, the search for alternatives to common antimicrobials by the scientific community has intensified. Substances obtained from nature have shown great potential as new sources of antimicrobial activity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of five bee venoms, also called apitoxins, against two common foodborne pathogens. A total of 50 strains of the Gram-negative pathogen Salmonella enterica and 8 strains of the Gram-positive pathogen Listeria monocytogenes were tested. The results show that the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were highly influenced by the bacterial genus. The MIC values ranged from 256 to 1024 µg/mL in S. enterica and from 16 to 32 µg/mL in L. monocytogenes. The results of this study demonstrate that apitoxin is a potential alternative agent against common foodborne pathogens, and it can be included in the development of new models to inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the food chaineng© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Atribución 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ApitoxinAntimicrobial resistanceNatural antimicrobial compoundsFoodborne pathogensSalmonellaListeria monocytogenesjournal article10.3390/antibiotics90703672079-6382open access