Antimicrobial Activities of Cymbopogon citratus and Ximenia Americana Leaf Extracts Against Some Selected Bacterial and Yeast Clinical Isolates

Abstract

Increasing emergence of resistance to antibiotics by pathogenic microorganisms worldwide necessitates the need for finding new antimicrobial agents with minimal resistance and side effects. This study was carried out to investigate the phytochemical content and antimicrobial activities of two ethno-medicinal plants namely: Cymbopogon citratus and Ximenia Americana. Methanol and aqueous were used as solvent for a soxhlet and aqueous percolation extraction techniques to obtain the crude extracts of the named plant parts. Tannins, steroids, reducing sugars, tritapenoids and Flavonoids were found present in these plant extracts. GC-MS analysis done in this study indicates the presence of some basic phenolic compounds, such as; Cyclohexane-1-3,5-trione & 2-phenyl-1,4-benzopyrone, in the C. citratus extract and methyl guanidine & 3-meyhylheptyl acetate in the X. americana extract, which have been attributed with numerous antimicrobial effects onmicrobial pathogens. Using an agar well diffusion bioassay technique the C. citratus extracts shows; both the extracts are active against E. coli and P. aeroginosa. While X. americana extracts shows a higher activity against C. albican. However the MIC/MBC/MFC of all the extracts shows that known of the extracts has an active viability below 12.5µg/ml.