Antibacterial activity of extracts obtained from plants of central Argentina.

FUNES CHABÁN M; JORAY M; SOLA C; BOCCO JL; PALACIOS S; CARPINELLA C

Córdoba

Congreso; 3rd International Meeting on Pharmaceutical Sciences,; 2014

Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, UNC

Bacterial infections are dramatically increasing every day for diverse reasons, mainly due to thedevelopment of resistance to conventional antibiotics. In this situation, and given the lack of new highly effective drugs, numerous extracts obtained from plantsare being studied for chemical and anti-microbial characterization. Although many plant families are being investigated as sources of new antibiotics, the plant world is farfrom being totally explored and this also applies to the native flora from Argentina. Hence, extracts obtained from 69 native, introduced, adventive and naturalized plants from centralArgentina were evaluated for their in vitro inhibitory activity on pathogenic bacteria with the aim ofselecting the most active ones as new sources of effective antibiotics. The susceptibility of reference and clinical strains of Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Proteusmirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) andgentamicin- and methicillin-resistant S.aureus (MRSA) was determined. Among these last, endemicstrains of Hospital and Community Acquired S. aureus (HA-MRSA, CA-MRSA, respectively) obtainedfrom patients from Córdoba hospitals, were included. Extracts from Aloysia citriodora Palau and Lepechinia meyenii (Walp.) Epling were the most activeagainst all Gram positive and negative bacteria tested, being the last one the most potent (MICs andMBCs 0.062-1 and 0.250-2 mg/ml, respectively). Among the assayed extracts, those from Gaillardiamegapotamica (Spreng.) Baker, Baccharis salicifolia (Ruiz et Pav.) Pers., Wedelia glauca (Ortega)Hicken, Viguiera tucumanensis (Hook. et Arn.) Griseb., Flourensia campestris Griseb, Elaphoglosumlorentzii (Hieron.) H. Christ and Angelphytum aspilioides (Griseb.) H. Rob. showed high inhibitionagainst HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA. The antibacterial activity shown by the plant extracts suggests that they could become as source of novelantibacterial drugs.