Antbacterial Property of Ethanolic Extract from the Leaves of Acacia nilotica WILD. ON Staphylococcus aureus AND Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Abstract

The traditional medicine involves the use of different plants or the bioactive constituents of different plants to cure diseases, and this has been practiced since ancient times based on the history of human beings. Acacia nilotica is a multipurpose plant belonging to the family Mimosaceae. Commonly known as Prickly acacia in English and Bagaruwa in Hausa language, it has been used traditionally to treat infections. The present study aimed at investigating the antibacterial activity of Acacia nilotica Wild. ethanolic leaves extract and its column fractions against selected multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Extracts of Acacia nilotica were prepared using ethanol on the basis of their increasing polarity with varying concentrations and were screened for antibacterial activity using the disc diffusion assay. The crude extract was further subjected to column and thin layer chromatography (TLC) for bioassay-guided fractionation; thus, a total of 74 fractions were obtained. The fractions were screened for antibacterial activity, and fraction 6 (CF6) showed the highest zone of inhibition of 12 mm and 9 mm against S. aureus and P. aeruginosa, respectively. Therefore, this study demonstrated the value of A. nilotica as an alternative for the treatment of bacterial infections. The most active fraction can be further explored to isolate and characterize the bioactive components responsible for biological activity to develop new antibacterial drugs.