Anthelmintic and antimicrobial activity of leaf extracts.

Due to the endless emergence of drug resistant pathogens, there is a constant need for new therapeutic agents for clinical use. The identification of active components in natural products and determining the efficacy of these active components has become the current focus of pharmacological research. The present study aimed to evaluate the anthelmintic and antimicrobial activities of leaf extract (ILE) against the earthworm , the gram-positive bacteria (, , and ), the gram-negative bacteria (, and and the yeast . Methanolic extract of leaf was obtained and the total phenolics and flavonoids in ILE were determined. The anthelmintic study was carried out to determine the time to paralysis and time to death of worms using three doses (100, 200, and 300 mg/mL) of ILE. Also, Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion susceptibility method was used to determine the antimicrobial activity of ILE. The results showed that ILE induces paralysis and death of at all concentration tested faster than the reference drug, Albendazole. Additionally, ILE exhibited prominent antimicrobial activity against all gram-positive bacteria tested but almost no significant activity against the gram-negative bacteria, except . ILE showed close similarity to the spectrum of chloramphenicol and cefoxitin activities. Furthermore, was highly susceptible to the leaf extracts. Our results showed that ILE is an effective anthelmintic and antimicrobial agent.