Abstract
Staphylococcus species are the most versatile and adaptive organisms. They are widespread in nature and inhabit the skin, mucosa and nose in humans. Search for medicinally valuable plants with antimicrobial activity is being emphasized due to the increasing antibiotic resistance in bacteria. In the present study, the antibacterial potential of Rosmarinus officinalis (Rosemary) and Murraya koenigii (curry leaves) was evaluated against multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus clinical isolates using well diffusion method. In this study, 60 multi-drug resistant clinical isolates of S. aureus (43) and Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CoNS) (17) were screened. Out of these 60 isolates, 43 were sensitive to aqueous infusion of rosemary; 23 to aqueous decoction and 58 to ethanolic extract whereas, 24 isolates were sensitive to the essential oil. In case of the curry leaves, no antibacterial activity was observed in aqueous infusion and decoction while only 14 isolates were sensitive to the ethanolic extract. The aqueous infusion of rosemary exhibited an average zone of inhibition of 21±5.69 mm against CoNS and 17 ± 4.77 mm against S. aureus, the zone of inhibition of aqueous decoction of rosemary was also greater against CoNS (17 ± 5.78 mm) then S. aureus (13 ± 6.91 mm) and the ethanolic extract showed almost similar zone of inhibition against S. aureus (22 ± 3.61 mm) and CoNS (21 ± 7.64 mm). Whereas, the essential oil of rosemary showed greater zone of inhibition against S. aureus (16 ± 4.67 mm) as compared to CoNS (15 ± 6.94 mm) strains. Aqueous infusion and decoction of curry leaves revealed no significant antibacterial potential against all tested Staphylococcal isolates and ethanolic extract also showed only a weak response. These results demonstrate that Rosmarinus officinalis possesses anti-staphylococcal activity.
