Original Articles
Selva Kumar Sivagnanam and Mud
Abstract
Indian herbal medicines have served as major source of medicines for prevention and treatment of many diseases including microbial infections. Emergence of multidrug resistance has limited the therapeutic options for antibiotics in the world and monitoring resistance by bacteria on these antibiotics has become an important necessity. The use of traditional herbal medicines in crude or refined form may help in the treatment of microbial infections with two advantages, i.e. the cure is achieved and the chances of microbes becoming resistant are minimized. The herbal medicines have the advantage of not producing major side effects as is found in case of usual antibiotics. Therefore this study was undertaken to focus on the in vitro antimicrobial effects of two plants. Plant materials of Annona glabra were tested for their antibacterial activities on selected strains of bacteria namely, Bacillus cereus, Shigella flexneri and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These activities were compared with standard antibiotic namely Broad spectrum antibiotics, Penicillin and Ampicillin. Antimicrobial activity was measured using the standard method of diffusion disc plates on agar and the MIC was calculated using dilution method. Our results clearly indicate that Annona glabra has antimicrobial properties.