Phenol-Rich Compounds Sweet Gel: A Statistically More Effective Antibiotic than Cloxacillin Against Pseudomonas Aeruginosa

Dashtdar, Mehrab; Dashtdar, Mohammad Reza; Dashtdar, Babak; Khan, Gazala Afreen; Kardi, Karima

This research was conducted through 2015 at the laboratories of Dubai Pharmacy College United Arab Emirates (UAE). The processing of the plants performed in this study was the same as the traditional method used by the people in the Iranian Bakhtiari tribe, as mentioned in Ref [15] . The phenol-rich compound sweet gel was prepared by blending four natural herbal extract Acacia catechu (L.F.) Willd, Castanea sativa, Ephedra sinica stapf, and momia in to combination of sweet gel medium, including honey, maple saps, date syrup, pomegranate extract and Azadirachta indica gum as a stabilizer. The combinations were screened by using a well-diffusion assay with cloxacillin as a control. Suspension assays were used to determine the antimicrobial activities of the medium gel alone and of the medium gel in combination with the four natural herbal extract. The test organism was P. aeruginosa. In this study, eight plant species were used as shown in table 2 and 3. The ingredients of the sweet gel compound are presented in Table 4 , Bacterial strains and growth conditions. A bacterial strain used in this study was Pseudomonas spp. The inhibition of bacterial growth was studied by using the well-diffusion method with nutrient agar, as commonly practiced in medical bacteriology, and was purchased from HiMedia Laboratories, India. Plates were inoculated with 100 µL of each pathogenic microorganism adjusted to standardized inoculum (1.5 × 10 8 CFU/mL) in triplicates and were spread with sterile swabs. Eight mm wells were drilled into the agar by using a sterile stainless steel borer. For the preparation of Phenol-rich compound herbal extracts, one gram of Aslan crude extract (Table 3) was added to 10 mL of distilled water to form 10% Aslan (W/V), which was heated and stirred until all ingredients had dissolved. It was then mixed with an equal amount of sweet gel, which included honey, date, maple syrup and pomegranate in specific percentages, as shown in Table 3 , after which Neem gum as much as 5 percent of the total weight, was added as stabilizer. One drop of each sample solution (50 uL) was applied to each well on the plate by using a Pasteur pipette. The Petri dishes thus prepared were left at room temperature for ten minutes to allow diffusion of the extract into the agar. After incubation for 24 hours at 37°C, the plates were observed. Anti-bacterial activity was indicated by an inhibition zone surrounding the well (including the well diameter) containing the plant extract. The diameters of the zones of inhibition were measured in millimeters and interpreted based on published standards [20] . Anti-bacterial activity was recorded if the zone of inhibition was greater than 8 mm. The interpretation of the anti-bacterial activity results was done according to the diameter of the zone of inhibition as follows: zones with diameters < 9 mm zone were considered inactive, zones with diameters from 9 to 12 mm were considered partially active, zones with diameters from 13 to 18 mm were considered active, and zones with diameters from > 18 mm were considered very active. The means and standard deviations of the diameters of the inhibition zones were calculated. The standard anti-bacterial agent was cloxacillin. Data were evaluated using the IBM SPSS software program (version 19; IBM SPSS Inc., IL, USA). The herbal extract groups and the control groups were compared at the 95% confidence interval, and the results were expressed as means ± standard deviations