Antibacterial activity of extract of leaves of Atalantia ceylanica (Yakinaran)

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.