Antimicrobial and modulation effects of selected Ghanaian medicinal plants

The alarming rise in the incidences of multidrug-resistant microorganisms and the decline innew antibiotic discovery make the search for new antimicrobial agents or efforts at restoring the activity of older antibiotics to which the microbes have developed resistance very necessary. The aim of the present study is to investigate the antimicrobial and modulation effects of the 70% ethanol extracts of Lannea schimperi, Commelina nudiflora and Piliostigma reticulatum against usceptible strains of microorganisms. Using the broth microdilution method, the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of the extracts were determined. The checkerboard assay was used to determine the modulation effects when sub-inhibitory concentrations of plant extracts were combined with the standard antibiotics. All three plants extracts possessed weak antimicrobial effects. For the modulation experiments, fifteen of the twenty-seven combinatorial casesyielded biologically significant effects. The ethanol extracts of the three plants studied here are good modulators as they reduced the MIC of ciprofloxacin and ketoconazole by factors that are comparable to that of reserpine. However the exact compounds and their exact mechanism of modulation require further investigation. Keywords: Anti-infective, modulation, Lannea schimperi, Commelina nudiflora, Piliostigmareticulatum, ethnomedicine