Abstract:
Antibacterial activity of leaves of Atalantia ceylanica was tested qualitatively against 05
bacterial strains with the modified plate method at Gampaha Wickramarachchi Ayurveda
Institute. The steam of boiled leaves and extract are used by certain villagers as a traditional
treatment for healing respiratory ailments such as influenza. Even though natural flora may
be effective in curing health defects, scientific studies on subject is limited. Thus the study
was arranged to fill the gap for certain extent to harness natural resources effectively in
health. So as the study was aimed to investigate the antibacterial properties of Atlanta leaves.
The plates, prepared with the watery extract of boiled leaves, which comprised of neat
concentration of raw leaf materials and Mueller-Hinton agar were inoculated with laboratory
stored standard bacterial strains including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus
pneumonia, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Methicillin resistant
Staphylococcus aureus separately, which can cause respiratory as well as gastro- intestinal
symptoms. For the control test, distilled water was used to make plates instead of watery leaf
extract. Even after the duplicated experiment, no strain was found to be inhibited by the leaf
materials, which indicated that the neat concentration of raw chemical compound of
particular leaves have no inhibitory action on tested strains. As the respiratory infection is not
only caused by bacteria but also by viruses, perhaps phytochemicals might have possessed
antiviral as well as antibacterial properties on organisms other than the tested strains.
Occasionally the chemicals of the particular plant leaves might have possessed certain antiinflammatory
features to control respiratory symptoms. Nevertheless it was clear that the
chemical compounds of the distillation of leaves of Atalantia ceylanica had no significant
inhibitory effect on the growth of tested strains. The same experiment was carried out early
for the steam of particular leaf and the results were found to be the same.
