PRELIMINARY PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING AND ANTIBACTERIAL PROPERTIES OF CRUDE LEAVES EXTRACT AND FRACTIONS OF ACACIA NILOTICA (LINN.)
A. Abdulhamid*, Y. U. Dabai and Amar Mohamed Ismail
ABSTRACT
Infectious diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses are
still a major threat to public health. Their impact is particularly large in
developing countries due to the relative unavailability of medicines
and the emergence of widespread drug resistance. This has lead to the
search of new antimicrobial agents mainly among plant extracts. As
part of our ongoing research to purify, isolate and characterized
antibacterial compounds from the extracts of some Nigerian medicinal
plants, Acacia nilotica (Linn.) was screened for its preliminary
phytochemical and antibacterial activity. The preliminary
phytochemical screening of the extracts was carried out using standard
methods while the antibacterial activity was done using disc diffusion
method. The results for the phytochemical screening showed the
presence of most of the phytochemicals tested. The results for the antibacterial activity of the
crude methanolic extract and fractions of the leaf of Acacia nilotica showed varying degree
of antibacterial activity against the bacterial isolates. However, crude methanolic extract,
ethyl acetate and butanol fractions showed relatively high zone of inhibition (mm), minimum
inhibitory concentrarion (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). They were
found to inhibit the growth of most of the test bacterial isolates comprising of both Grampositive
and Gram-negative organisms. On the other hand, hexane and aqueous fractions shows little or no activity against tested isolate. These findings support previous reports on the antimicrobial activity of this plants. The result of the present study signifies the potential of Acacia nilotica leaf as a source of therapeutic agents, which may provide leads in the ongoing search for antimicrobial agents from plants.
Keywords: Acacia nilotica, antibacterial activity, phytochemicals and zone of inhibition.
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