Background: Silver has extensive and powerful antimicrobial activities and silver-containing materials have been widely used in many medical fields. Recently nanoparticulate silver was developed and it is superior to other types of silver in the antimicrobial activity and cytotoxicity. There have been no data from Korea on its antimicrobial activity, and we evaluated the antimicrobial activity of NANOVER against common clinical isolates.

Methods: Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of NANOVER for clinical isolates were determined using the agar dilution method of Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute. A total of 45 isolates were tested including 4 reference strains (Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212), 5 strains of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), 7 strains of methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA), 14 strains of E. coli, and 15 strains of P. aeruginosa.

Results: The MICs of S. aureus to NANOVER were under 12.5 μg/mL regardless of the methicillin sensitivity or resistance. The other isolates showed the MICs under 12.5 to 6.25 μg/mL.

Conclusion: NANOVER has strong and extensive antimicrobial activities to common clinical isolates including those resistant to other antimicrobials. (Korean J Clin Microbiol 2006;9(2):110-114)