Antifungal susceptibility testing of few medicinal plant extracts against Aspergillus spp. and Microsporum sp.

Abstract

Mycoses are fungal infections, the incidence of which in immunocompromised patients is currently devastating and the drugs available at hand are reported to exhibit side effects. To surmount the prevailing difficulty of complete eradication of the fungal infection, exploring new arena is a requisite and nature's wealth can be one area that may lead to a cure for fungal infections. In the present study, the whole methanolic extracts of few medicinal plants were evaluated against Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus niger and the dermatophyte Microsporum gypseum isolated from the soil. Enicostemma littorale and Wrightia tinctoria exhibited significant (P<0.001) inhibition of about 48% against A. niger. Eupatorium odoratum inhibited both A. fumigatus (52%) and A.flavus (32%) whereas Enicostemma littorale showed about 54% of significant (P<0.05) inhibition against A. fumigatus. Significant inhibition of M. gypseum was exhibited only by Sphaeranthus indicus flower extracts (65% at P<0.05) which was even higher than the inhibition exhibited by positive control ketaconazole (49%) at 0.1 mg/ml concentration. This study demonstrates that among the medicinal plants evaluated E.littorale, W.tinctoria, E.odoratum and S.indicus flower exhibited significant antifungal activity against the tested organisms.