Antimicrobial Susceptibility, Biochemical Characterization and Molecular Typing of Biofield Treated Klebsiella pneumoniae

Pathogenic isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae), particularly the extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) producing strains, are mostly associated with the failure of antibiotic therapy in nosocomial infections. The present work was designed to evaluate the impact of Mr. Trivedi’s biofield energy treatment on phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of K. pneumoniae. The strain of K. pneumoniae bearing ATCC 15380 (American Type Culture Collection) was procured from the Bangalore Genei, in sealed pack and divided into control and treated groups. Treated group was subjected to Mr. Trivedi’s biofield energy treatment and analyzed for the antimicrobial susceptibility, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), biochemical reactions, and biotyping using automated MicroScan Walk-Away® system. Further, the effect of biofield treatment was also evaluated using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) in order to determine their epidemiological relatedness and genetic characteristics of biofield treated K. pneumoniae samples. The antimicrobial susceptibility results showed an improve sensitivity (i.e. from intermediate to susceptible) of ampicillin/sulbactam and chloramphenicol, while altered sensitivity of cephalothin (i.e. from susceptible to intermediate) was also reported as compared to the control sample. The MIC value showed two-fold decrease in MIC value of ampicillin/sulbactam (i.e. 16/8 to ≤8/4 μg/mL) and chloramphenicol (i.e. 16 to ≤ 8 μg/mL) as compared to the control. The cephalothin showed two-folds change (i.e. ≤ 8 to 16 μg/mL) in the MIC value as compared with the control. Biofield treatment showed 9.09% alterations in biochemical reactions followed by a change in biotype number (7774 4272) in the treated group with respect to the control (7774 4274). Genetic fingerprinting was performed on control and treated samples using RAPD-PCR biomarkers, which showed an average range of 11 to 15% of polymorphism among the treated samples with respect to the control. These results suggested that Mr. Trivedi’s biofield energy treatment has a significant impact on K. pneumoniae.