Antimicrobial Activity of Selected Medicinal Plants from a Sub-Saharan African Country against Bacterial Pathogens from Post-Operative Wound Infections.

Globally, the application of medicinal plants in the management of acute and chronic wounds can be considered a common occurrence in most traditional medicine practices. In view of this, many plants in the tropical and subtropical regions have been screened for their wound-healing activities. Consequently, plants having antimicrobial activity against multidrug-resistant (MD-R) pathogens can be considered great assets. Therefore, this study evaluated ethanolic and aqueous extracts of five medicinal plants (, , , , and ) for their antimicrobial activities against MD-R bacterial pathogens isolated from post-operative wounds; Methods: This involved the aqueous and ethanolic extraction of the selected medicinal plants. Preliminary phytochemical constituents of the plants were examined. The agar well diffusion method was then used to determine the antibacterial activity of the leaves against reference strains ( ATCC 25922, ATCC 19430, ATCC 27853 and ATCC 25923, and a Methicillin-Resistant strain) as well as the MDR clinical isolates (, , and ) from the wounds; Results: The preliminary phytochemical analysis of the leaves showed the presence of saponins, phenolics, and reducing sugars in almost all the plants tested. All plant extracts were observed to have some antimicrobial activity against at least one reference strain. For the clinical MDR isolates, from this study showed highest inhibition to growth of all bacteria used. Activity of against was highest as compared to that of and . Similar observation was made for , and where the highest activity was observed against ; Conclusion: This study has mainly shown that , , , , and exhibits antimicrobial activities against MD-R bacterial pathogens isolated from post-operative wounds. Also, these plants has bioactive phytochemical compounds with potential medicinal values for the treatment of numerous infections. Therefore, these plants may be helpful in the management of acute and chronic wounds, especially in traditional medicine practices.