I. P. Udoh
Department of Medical Laboratory Science, Faculty of Health Sciences and Technology College of Medicine University of Nigeria, Enugu campus
Title: Antifungal activity of Methanolic Leaf extract of Sphenocentrum jollyanum (SJ) Pierre (Moon seed) Against Clinical Isolates of Fusarium Species
Biography
Biography: I. P. Udoh
Abstract
Antifungal activity of crude methanolic leaf extract of Sphenocentrum jollyanum (SJ) was screened for antifungal activities against fusarial isolates from humans (corneal scrapings, skin scrapings and nail clippings) and plants (tomato seedlings, palm fruit, sweet potato, Irish potato, banana, carrot, plantain, pawpaw, pear, water-melon and pepper) sources. Isolation and identification of Fusarium species were carried out using standard mycological methods. The extract and antifungal agents (miconazole, ketoconazole, terbinafine, fluconazole, ciclopirox, voriconazole, and itraconazole) were screened against 1265 fusarial isolates from human specimens and 2,140 fusarial isolates from plants sources using modified agar well diffusion and modified agar disc diffusion methods respectively. Susceptibility test of SJ extract revealed that it possesses potent antifungal activity against both human and plant isolates tested. The mean inhibition zone diameter (IZD) of the extract against isolates from human and plant sources were 31.9700±0.65612 and 29.0300±0.97147 respectively, while that of vericonazole (most potent) was 15.4808±0.69365 and 15.2380±0.70292 for human and plant respectively. This was followed by fluconazole with mean IZD of 13.7601±0.77770 and 13.9860±0.80569 for human and plant, respectively. However multi-resistance was observed among other antifungal agents tested. There was significant difference between the activity of the extract and that of antifungal agents (P = 0.000). The lowest MIC for SJ was 0.0679µg/ml while that of antifungal agent was < 1. The IZD and MICs results further proved that extract has potent antifungal activity. In conclusion the results of this study showed that SJ is a rich source of antimicrobial agents.