Dietary antioxidant seleno-L-methionine protects macrophages infected with Burkholderia thailandensis.

Burkholderia pseudomallei is a facultative intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of melioidosis, a potentially life-threatening disease endemic in Southeast Asia and Northern Australia. Treatment of melioidosis is a long and costly process and the pathogen is inherently resistant to several classes of antibiotics, therefore there is a need for new treatments that can help combat the pathogen. Previous work has shown that the combination of interferon-gamma, an immune system activator, and the antibiotic ceftazidime synergistically reduced the bacterial burden of RAW 264.7 macrophages that had been infected with either B. pseudomallei or Burkholderia thailandensis. The mechanism of the interaction was found to be partially dependent on interferon-gamma-induced production of reactive oxygen species inside the macrophages. To further confirm the role of reactive oxygen species in the effectiveness of the combination treatment, we investigated the impact of the antioxidant and reactive oxygen species scavenger, seleno-L-methionine, on intracellular and extracellular bacterial burden of the infected macrophages. In a dose-dependent manner, high concentrations of seleno-L-methionine (1000 μM) were protective towards infected macrophages, resulting in a reduction of bacteria, on its own, that exceeded the reduction caused by the antibiotic alone and rivaled the effect of ceftazidime and interferon-gamma combined. Seleno-L-methionine treatment also resulted in improved viability of infected macrophages compared to untreated controls. We show that the protective effect of seleno-L-methionine was partly due to its inhibition of bacterial growth. In summary, our study shows a role for high dose seleno-L-methionine to protect and treat macrophages infected with B. thailandensis.