Objective: The present study aimed at evaluating the natural antimicrobial activity of Lawsonia inermis (L. inermis) and Indigofera tinctoria (I. tinctoria) against a reference and pathogenic clinically isolated strains compare with some antibiotics. Methods:The antimicrobial activity of Lawsonia inermis (red henna) and Indigo tinctoria (black henna) was evaluated against clinically isolated strains from urinary tract and wounds infected patients. The six tested strains namely were Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus fecalis, Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans. The antimicrobial activity was evaluated by agar diffusion method and microplate dilution for measuring the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). An American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) of bacteria was used as a control for confirming the type of the isolated bacteria.Results: Both red and black henna showed variable antimicrobial activity against tested bacteria and C. albicans. Alcoholic and oily extracts were more effective than water. Staphylococcus epidermis was significantly affected with water extract of black henna (20±1.1) and red henna (11±0.5). Nigella sativa oil extract with black henna had showed significant synergism effects against some microorganisms as Enterococcus fecalis (40±1.5), P. aeruginosa (15±0.9) and Candida albicans (18±0.6). Conclusion:Black and red henna had antibacterial and antifungal activities. They exhibited synergistic effects when mixed with black seed oil.

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Fluoroquinolones are clinically successful antibacterial agents. In this work a series of novel 7-substituted anilino-8-nitrofluoroquinolone esters (3-9), acids (10-16) and 8-amino reduced derivatives (17-23) of the later compounds were successfully prepared and characterized using spectroscopic techniques. All the compounds tested (10-23) showed good antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram- negative standard bacterial strains. Interestingly, 8-amino reduced derivatives (17-22) were more active against both standard strains than their 8-nitro acid analogues (10-15). Moreover, some targeted compounds have shown reasonable activity mainly against resistant gram positive bacteria. In particular compounds 10, 12 and 16 displayed a potent activity against methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) with MIC values of 4.7, 2.3 and 1.2 μg/mL, respectively. Lipophilicity could be a plausible explanation of such higher activity against the gram positive resistant strain (MRSA). Biological screening of cytotoxic activity against five cancer cell lines using an in vitro cell culture system was achieved for all tested compounds. These derivatives have shown weak activity for most of them. Interestingly, more lipophilic nitroacids (10-15) were more active than their analogous reduced acids (17-22).