The Susceptibility of Escherichia coli to Antibiotics and Medicinal Plant Extracts Used in Folklore Medicine in Ika North Local Government Area of Delta State Nigeria
Description
Medicinal plants are a potential source of new drugs like antimicrobials. The need for new antimicrobials is necessitated by the fact that multi-drug resistance by bacteria is now a common phenomena. The medicinal plants used to treat infectious diseases in Delta were investigated as potential replacement for antibiotics used locally for the treatment of Staph infections. The ethnobotanical use of the plants used is shown in tables 1a and b. This was got from different literature and also by interviewing locals. Polar compounds were extracted with ethanol and methanol while non polar compounds were got with chloroform and n-hexane and are shown in figures 1, 2, 3, 4.These compounds and also aqueous extracts were got from the fifteen medicinal plants used were tested on the growth of the test organism Escherichia coli. the susceptibility of the test organism to the various extracts was accessed using the criteria set by ACCLS, 2012. The data indicates that while the test organism was not susceptible to any of the antibiotics tested but instead showed intermediate susceptibility. The data show that the test organism was susceptible to some of the plants tested and as such could be investigated further as potential sources of new drugs for the treatment of staph infections.
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The test plants were collected fresh from the wild and dried using a food grade dehydrator (Stockli Dorrex Dehydrator, Switzerland) at forty degrees celsius overnight. The dried plants were pulverised using a dry mill blender (Kenwood Multi-Mill (Kenwood Ltd, UK). Aqueous, Polar and non polar compounds were extracted using water, ethanol, methanol, chloroform and n-hexane . These were concentrated and evaporated to dryness using a rotary evaporator and drying over anhydrous sodium sulphate. all compounds used were adjusted to a 10mg/ml concentration before use. The test organism Escherichia coli was grown Mueller Hinton Agar and susceptibility tested using the Kirby-Bauer Disc Diffusion method. Paper discs containing extracts of the fifteen medicinal plants used were introduced into already seeded plates and incubated at 37 degrees celsius. Commercial antibiotic discs were also introduced to already poured and seeded MHA plates and incubated overnight also. The inhibition zones were read for all the extracts and the susceptibility of the test organisms to the extracts and the antibiotics recorded in triplicates and statistically analysed. The ACCLS criteria for determining susceptibility of organisms to an antimicrobial agent was used to determine the susceptibility of the test organism to the various extracts and antibiotics.