Abstract

ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF SOME MEDICINAL PLANTS AGAINST MULTI-DRUG RESISTANT CLINICAL ISOLATE OF STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE IN INDIA

R. Kadhar Nivas* and M. Boominathan

Abstract

Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of invasive diseases such as pneumoniae, meningitis and sepsis. Furthermore the emergency of multidrug-resistant streptococcus pneumoniae has been focused worldwide. One of the most important bacterial pathogens that affect respiratory system. The occurrence of multidrug resistant strains of S. pneumoniae necessitates the discovery of new classes of antipneumonia drugs. As some of the medicinal plants and their extracts have antibacterial activity, we aimed to investigate the antibacterial potential of four Indian medicinal plants including D.elata, S.Campanulata, Phoenix dactylifera L., and Pteruspermum Canescens against multidrug-resistant strain of S. pneumoniae, which was screened for its antibiotic resistance profile showing 50% resistance of the tested antibiotics. In this research micro-broth dilution method was used to study the inhibitory activity of ethanol, distilled water and Zamzam water extracts of all plants under investigation. The obtained results showed that all Zamzam extracts of the four studied plant species inhibited the growth of S.pneumoniae. It was clearly noticed that there was a difference in the antibacterial activity between distilled water and Zamzam water extracts recording higher activity in the Zamzam water extract of some of the studied plant species. Pteruspermum Canescens distilled water extract was the most effective one with MIC equal to 0.391 mg/ml. In general, both water extracts were more bioactive than the ethanol extracts for all the examined plants. These results confirmed the possibility of using these plant species in medicine and pharmaceutical industry of new drugs for the treatment of multidrug-resistant clinical isolates of S. pneumoniae.

Keywords: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Antimicrobial Activity, Medicinal Plant Extracts, India.