Ethnobotanical and antimicrobial study of some selected medicinal plants used in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) as a potential source to cure infectious diseases.
BACKGROUND
Present investigation deals with antimicrobial screening of ten medicinally important plants used by the inhabitants of district Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) for different infectious diseases.


METHODS
Aqueous, n-hexane and ethanolic extracts of each plant were tested for their antimicrobial activity against both Gram positive and Gram negative strains of bacteria, as well as strain of yeast. Agar well diffusion and broth dilution methods were used to determine the antimicrobial activity of different plant extracts.


RESULTS
The results indicated that all plants exhibited antimicrobial activity against one or more test pathogens. Interestingly, extracts of three plants showed strong and broad spectrum activity as compared to rest of the extracts which demonstrated the moderate activity. On the whole ethanolic extracts exhibited maximum antimicrobial effect than their corresponding aqueous and n-hexane extracts, when compared with standard antibiotics i.e., Streptomycin and Tetracycline. Among various extracts, only ethanolic extract of Azadirachta indica and aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Eucalyptus globulus and Bergenia ciliata and ethanolic extract of Punica granatum were found to have potentially promising activity against test microorganisms.


CONCLUSIONS
Different plant extracts show promising antimicrobial activity justifying their usage in traditional medicines. This study will be continued to identify more plants with potential antimicrobial components.
Department of Environmental Sciences, COMSTAS Institute of Information Technology, 22060 Abbottabad, Pakistan. khan_m_nadeem@yahoo.com.
Nadeem
N
Khan
Arshad Mehmood
AM
Abbasi
Ghulam
G
Dastagir
Abdul
A
Nazir
Ghulam Mujtaba
GM
Shah
Mohammad Maroof
MM
Shah
Munir H
MH
Shah
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects; D019448:Ethnobotany; D006801:Humans; D007239:Infections / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000382:microbiology*; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests; D010154:Pakistan; D008517:Phytotherapy; D010936:Plant Extracts / Q000494:pharmacology*; D010946:Plants, Medicinal; D015003:Yeasts / Q000187:drug effects
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D010936:Plant Extracts