Antibacterial and anti-virulence effects of furazolidone on Trueperella pyogenes and Pseudomonas aeruginosa

BACKGROUND: Trueperella pyogenes and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are two important bacterial pathogens closely relating to the occurrence and development of forest musk deer respiratory purulent disease. Although T. pyogenes is the causative agent of the disease, the subsequently invaded P. aeruginosa will predominate the infection by producing a substantial amount of quorum-sensing (QS)-controlled virulence factors, and co-infection of them usually creates serious difficulties for veterinary treatment. In order to find a potential compound that targets both T. pyogenes and P. aeruginosa, the antibacterial and anti-virulence capacities of 55 compounds, which have similar core structure to the signal molecules of P. aeruginosa QS system, were tested in this study by performing a series of in vitro screening experiments. RESULTS: We identified that furazolidone could significantly reduce the cell densities of T. pyogenes in mono-culture or in the co-culture with P. aeruginosa. Although the growth of P. aeruginosa could also be moderately inhibited by furazolidone, the results of phenotypic identification and transcriptomic analysis further revealed that sub-inhibitory furazolidone had remarkable inhibitory effect on the biofilm production, motility, and QS system of P. aeruginosa. Moreover, furazolidone could efficiently protect Caenorhabditis elegans models from P. aeruginosa infection under both fast-killing and slow-killing conditions. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports the antibacterial and anti-virulence abilities of furazolidone on T. pyogenes and P. aeruginosa, and provides a promising strategy and molecular basis for the development of novel anti-infectious drugs to dealing with forest musk deer purulent disease, or other diseases caused by T. pyogenes and P. aeruginosa co-infection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12917-022-03216-5.