Antifungal Activities of Different Extracts of Marine Macroalgae Against Dermatophytes and Candida Species

Abstract

Algae are bioactive natural resources, and due to the medical importance of superficial mycoses, we focused the action of macroalgae extracts against dermatophytes and Candida species. Seaweed obtained from the Riacho Doce beach, Alagoas (Brazil), were screened for the antifungal activity, through crude extracts using dichloromethane, chloroform, methanol, ethanol, water and chloroform and hexane fractions of green, brown and red algae in assays with standard strains of the dermatophytes Trichophyton rubrum, T. tonsurans, T. mentagrophytes, Microsporum canis, M. gypseum and yeasts Candida albicans, C. krusei, C. guilliermondi and C. parapsilosis. The M44-A and M27-A2/M38A manuals by CLSI were followed, and the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) ranged from 0.03 to 16.00 μg ml(-1), and an inhibition halo of 10.00-25.00 mm was observed for dermatophytes, while for yeast, it was from 8.00 to 16.00 μg ml(-1) and 10.00-15.00 mm. M. canis showed MIC of 0.03 μg ml(-1) and the largest inhibition halo in T. rubrum (25.00 mm) through the use of the methanol extract. For C. albicans, dichloromethane, methanol and ethanol extracts formed the largest inhibition halo. The ethanol extract was shown to be the best inhibiting fungi growth, and chloroform and hexane fractions of H. musciformis inhibited the growth of all dermatophytes and C. albicans, yielding the conclusion that apolar extracts obtained from algae presented the best activity against important pathogenic fungi.

Antifungal and antiviral products of marine organisms

“…Seaweed obtained from the Riacho Doce beach, Alagoas (Brazil) exhibited antifungal activity against the yeasts C. albicans, Candida krusei, Candida guilliermondi , and Candida parapsilosis (Guedes et al 2012). …”

“…Seaweed obtained from the Riacho Doce beach, Alagoas (Brazil) exhibited antifungal activity against the dermatophytes T. rubrum, Trichophyton tonsurans, Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Microsporum canis , and Microsporum gypseum (Guedes et al 2012). …”

Mycoses and Antifungals: reviewing the basis of a current problem that still is a biotechnological target for marine products

“…During the last few years the scientific community has shown a considerable interest in the study of algal extract as sources of new compounds that might lead to therapeutically useful agents, especially novel antibiotics in order to combat new diseases and drug-resistant pathogens that are becoming a significant threat to public health (Guedes et al, 2012;Xiong et al, 2013). Marine derived have been proven to be a rich source of structurally unique and biologically active secondary metabolites with biological potential (Figure 2).…”

“…Marine substances presented antifungal activity against pathogenic fungi and were isolated from sea cucumber (Kumar et al, 2007), marine sponges (Piao et al, 2013), seaweeds (Guedes et al, 2012), microalgae (Kumar et al, 2013), bacteria (Petatán-Sagahón et al, 2011), mollusks and echinoderm (Umayaparvathi et al, 2012), and fishes (Hellio et al, 2012), namely, in all marine phyla (Figure 1). Unfortunately, many studies were performed with extracts of marine organisms, without the isolation of the molecules responsible for activity against fungi.…”

Spermicidal activity of Indian seaweeds: anin vitrostudy

“…Seaweeds represent a potential source of bioactive substances due to their high natural and chemical diversity. Recent findings evidenced that seaweeds contained antibacterial (Rosaline et al ., ), antiviral (Sinha et al ., ), antifungal (Guedes et al ., ), cytotoxicity (Spavieri et al ., ) and larvicidal potentials (Cetin et al ., ). Besides various seaweeds derived compounds that affect fertilisation and larval or embryonic development in both invertebrates and vertebrates.…”