Comparison of methods for evaluation of antimicrobial activity and determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) of aqueous and ethanol plant extracts

Abstract

Several studies have been conducted to discover new antimicrobial agents from plants to be used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and in the food industry. The lack of standardized methods for the evaluation of plant extracts with antimicrobial potential complicates the comparison of results. Taking into consideration the need to establish a method with consistent results to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of plant extracts, this study aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of extracts of some plants from the Myrtaceae family on different micro-organisms based on a comparative assay with three methods that are commonly used for the assess antimicrobials. The methods used were broth microdilution, and agar diffusion by disc and well. The evaluated extracts were those of Psidium guajava, Myrciaria cauliflora, and Syzygium cumini for Gram-positive and negative bacteria and yeast. In general, inhibition extracts promoted by the agar diffusion test by well was higher than the values obtained by disc, regardless of the plant extracts tested. However, the inhibitory activity of all micro-organisms was only possible to be determined with the microdilution broth method, which also presented the more reproducible results, and proved to be the most economic and reliable way to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of plant extracts in contrast with other methods