Antibacterial activity of Rhazya stricta Decne. indigenous to Pakistan

Abstract

Medicinal plants provide a rich reservoir of therapeutically active compounds which have the potential to contribute to the current pharmaceutical framework. The objective of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial activity of Rhazya stricta against some of the pathogenic bacteria. For this purpose methanol, ethanol, chloroform and aqueous extracts of aerial parts of R. stricta were tested against Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumonia, Enterobacter cloacae and Acinetobacter junii for their antibacterial potential, using disc diffusion method. All the extracts were seen effective against all the bacteria tested except Staphylococcus aureus. Only Chloroform and Aqueous extracts showed slight activity against Staphylococcus aureus. The chloroform extract showed significant antibacterial activity against all bacteria used in this study except Staphylococcus aureus. Our results suggest that R. stricta possesses effective antibacterial compounds which need isolation and characterization.