Abstract
Amoxicillin is the most widely used antibiotic in human medicine for treating bacterial infections. However, in the present research,
extract mediated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were conjugated with amoxicillin (Au-amoxi) to study their efficacy against the inflammation and pain caused by bacterial infections. The formation of AuNPs and Au-amoxi conjugates were confirmed by UV-visible surface plasmon peaks at 535 nm and 545 nm, respectively. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM), zeta potential (ZP), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies reveal that the size of AuNPs and Au-amoxi are found to be 42 nm and 45 nm, respectively. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) absorption bands at 3200 cm
, 1000 cm
, 1500 cm
, and 1650 cm
reveal the possible involvement of different moieties for the formation of AuNPs and Au-amoxi. The pH studies show that AuNPs and Au-amoxi conjugates are stable at lower pH. The carrageenan-induced paw edema test, writhing test, and hot plate test were used to conduct in vivo anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive studies, respectively. According to in vivo anti-inflammatory activity, Au-amoxi compounds have higher efficiency (70%) after 3 h at a dose of 10 mg/kg body weight as compared to standard diclofenac (60%) at 20 mg/kg, amoxicillin (30%) at 100 mg/kg, and
extract (35%) at 100 mg/kg. Similarly, for antinociceptive activities, writhing test results show that Au-amoxi conjugates produced the same number of writhes (15) but at a lower dose (10 mg/kg) compared to standard diclofenac (20 mg/kg). The hot plate test results demonstrate that the Au-amoxi has a better latency time of 25 s at 10 mg/kg dose when compared to standard Tramadol of 22 s at 30 mg/ kg, amoxicillin of 14 s at 100 mg/kg, and extract of 14 s at 100 mg/kg after placing the mice on the hot plate for 30, 60, and 90 min with a significance of (
≤ 0.001). These findings show that the conjugation of AuNPs with amoxicillin to form Au-amoxi can boost its anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive potential caused by bacterial infections.