The Antibacterial Activity Of Leaf Extracts Of Jatropiza Curcas And Eupliorbia Heterophylla

ABSTRACT

 Four extracts from Nigerian  plants, Euphorbia heterophylla and Jairopha curcas were screened for antibacterial activities using disc diffusion and micro dilution broth assays. Ethanol and Aqueous extracts of each of the plants were tested against four microorganisms consisting of two gram positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus faecalis) and two gram negative bacteria (Escherichia co/i and Pseudomonas aerugiaosa). The antibacterial activity was measured by the diameter zone of inhibition and minimum inhibitoiy concentration (MIC).All the extracts exhibited moderate broad spectrum antibacterial activities against the microorganisms except ethanol extract of I curcas which had no inhibitory activity on the organisms. The diameter of zone of inhibition range from 10mm-i 5mm at 2000mg/ml of crude extract peidisc. The MIC values were between I25mg/ml-l000mglml. The activities of some of the crude extracts were comparable to the reference antibiotics (Tezracycli,ie and Ainpici/lin) at standard concentration per disc. These findings are discussed towards the development of cheap, culturally acceptable standardized herbal medicines and as sources of novel macules for development of broad spectrum antibacterial agents.