The Antibacterial and Antioxidant Effect of <i>Salvadora persica</i> on Antibiotic Resistant Strains

Abstract

Many efforts have been devoted to studying the inhibitory effect of <i> Salvadora persica </i> (Miswak) on oral microorganisms. However, information regarding its antibacterial activity against other human pathogens is rare. Particularly, against <i> Pseudomonas aeruginosa </i> , <i> Acinetobacter baumannii </i> and <i> Enterobacter cloacae </i> . The purpose of this piece of work was to evaluate the antioxidant power and <i> in vitro </i> antibacterial activities of <i> Salvadora persica </i> extract against the three bacterial clinical isolates mentioned above. Therefore, the action of <i> Salvadora persica </i> extract on the three germs, studied via the aromatograms method, has given an inhibition zone 20, 18 and 14 respectively on <i> Pseudomonas aeruginosa </i> , <i> Acinetobacter baumannii </i> and <i> Enterobacter cloacae </i> . The methanol extract of <i> Salvadora persica </i> using Soxhlet has given an output of 19%. The antioxidant evaluation, which was performed using the DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl), free radical scavenging method, indicated that the methanol extract showed good antioxidant efficiency (IC50 = 15.47 mg/ml) compared to ascorbic acid with (IC50 = 0.097 mg/ml).