Introduction: The presence of microbes in our environment is always a permanent public health problem. In this context, research on natural treatment, less expensive and accessible to fight these microbial germs would be beneficial. Methods: During this work, molecules of thiosemicarbazones due to their numerous biological activities were hemi-synthesized in situ in the essential oil of Cymbopogon citratus in order to evaluate their antimicrobial activities. Results: Analysis of the essential oil extracted by hydrodistillation revealed the presence of 72.91% of citral. Citralthiosemicarbazone (CThio) and citral 4-phenyl-3-thiosemicarbazone (CPthio) were hemi-synthesized in this oil with interesting yields of 83% and 91%, respectively. After purification and confirmation of the structures of these molecules, the three substances were tested on eleven strains of microbes. Determination of the inhibition diameters showed that the activity of the essential oil is best in over 80% of strains. However, the largest diameter of inhibition (26 mm) was noted with CPthio against Salmonella typhi R 30951401. The determination of the minimum inhibitory concentrations showed that the oil remains more active with the smallest value of 0.3125 mg / ml against Micrococcus luteus. The lower value of minimum bactericidal concentrations was also obtained with the essential oil against Enterococcus foecalis ATCC 29212. Conclusion: The essential oil of C. citratus remains more active in the majority cases. It could be a great alternative in the fight against bacteria, and the advantage is that it remains a natural substance.
To ensure the safety of trypanocidal molecules of thiosemicarbazones hemi-synthesized in essential oil of Cymbopogon citratus, toxicology studies were conducted. These studies which were performed on rats "Wistar" had focused on our most active molecules: citral thiosemicarbazone, citral semicarbazone, citral 4phenylthiosemicarbazone and the starting substrate which was the essential oil of Cymbopogon citratus. From these studies, it appears that citral semicarbazone, citral 4-phenylthiosemicarbazone and essential oil were no toxic as LD 50 > 2000 mg/kg. Citral thiosemicarbazone was slightly more toxic with a LD 50 = 315 mg/kg. The study of biochemical parameters revealed that the use of a high dose of the compounds may affect kidney function. A strong dose of essential oil of Cymbopogon citratus could affect liver function. It appears that the citral 4-phenylthiosemicarbazone is a very promising compound because it had an excellent antitrypanosomal activity and had very low toxicity (IC 50 = 1.96 µM; LD 50 > 2000 mg/kg).
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