ANTIBACTERIAL POTENTIAL OF Zingiber officinale (GINGER) AGAINST SOME CLINICALLY RELEVANT BACTERIAL ISOLATES

Abstract

Cases of fake/weak drugs are abundant everywhere in the country today, especially in the use of antibiotics, which leads to an increase level of drug resistance among microorganisms which were known to be susceptible to particular antibiotics. Thus, the need to test for the antibacterial activity of ginger and garlic against some pathogenic microorganisms should be employed to support it's use as an ingredient for herbal medicines. This study explores the potential of ginger ethanol extracts and ginger chloroform extract tested against some clinically relevant bacterial strains. These include; Citrobacter sp, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas auregenosa, using agar well diffusion technique. Ciprofloxacin (1 mg/ml) was used as standard control. The test concentration of each extract was set as 100 mg/ml, 50 mg/ml, 25 mg/ml and 12.5 mg/ml. The phytochemical screening revealed the presence of tanins, flavonoids, saponins, cardiac glycosides, steroid, alkaloid, volatile oils, balsams and terpenoids. The results showed a higher zone of inhibition of 28.45 mm at 100 mg/ml concentration of ginger ethanol extract against S. aureus with the least activity against Citrobacter spp. with 6.30 mm at 100 mg/ml. The MIC of ginger ethanol extract against the test organisms was determined, which show values between 12.5 and 95 mg/ml. The MBC of ginger ethanol and chloroform extracts was between 12.5 and 100 mg/ml. The result of this study show that the extracts had activity against the test organisms and as such could be a potential therapeutic against the tested organisms.