Antibacterial activity of Terminalia chebula and Terminalia bellerica fruit extracts against imipenem and meropenem resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains Thirunavukkarasu Bharani1, Purushothaman Nirmala2, Valli S.1* 1P.G. and Research Department of Microbiology, Mohamed Sathak College of Arts and Science, Affiliated to University of Madras, Sholinganallur, Chennai-600119, Tamil Nadu, India 2Department of Microbiology, PERI college of Arts and Science, Mannivakkam, Chennai-600048, Tamil Nadu, India *Corresponding author e-mail: valli.ranjani@gmail.com
Online Published on 06 January, 2022. Abstract Pseudomonas aeruginosa remains a major clinical pathogen especially in nosocomial infections like pneumonia and cystic fibrosis associated with critical care and burn units. Imipenem and meropenem are the last resort carbapenem antibiotics for treatment of nosocomial infections. Imipenem resistance in Gram negative bacteria is associated with loss of porin and carbapenemases while, meropenem resistance is with hyper efflux. Since the treatment options are limited for carbapenem resistant P. aeruginosa, ayurvedic medicine is the alternative choice and this study was aimed at examining the antibacterial activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Terminalia chebula and T. bellerica fruits against imipenem and meropenem resistant P. aeruginosa clinical isolates. Out of the 72P. aeruginosa isolates collected, 21 were imipenem resistant and 17 were resistant to meropenem (MIC: 4 to >32 μg/ml). To determine the efficacy, the aqueous and ethanolic extracts of the fruits were prepared and then reconstituted with 5% dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). MIC of the fruit extracts were determined by agar dilution method.T. bellerica showed better antibacterial activity than T. chebula in both aqueous and ethanolic extracts. This study showed that Terminalia sp. could be a choice of treatment for the nosocomial infections caused by carbapenem resistant P. aeruginosa strains. Top Keywords Pseudomonas, Imipenem, Meropenem, Resistance, Terminalia, Fruit extracts. Top |