Quorum sensing modulation and inhibition in biofilm forming foot ulcer pathogens by selected medicinal plants.

The crisis of antibiotic resistance necessitates the search of phytochemicals as potential antibacterial, anti-quorum sensing and antibiofilm forming agents. For the present study, fifteen (15) selected medicinal plants were evaluated to inhibit the biological activities of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria (, , , and ) associated with diabetic foot ulcer. Antibacterial activities revealed noteworthy minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values ≤1 mg/mL for thirteen (13) out of the sixty (60) plant extracts screened. The potent extracts included ethyl acetate (0.25 mg/mL), methanol (0.5 mg/ml) and aqueous (0.5 mg/mL) extracts. Chemical profiling of the active extracts using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) identified neophytadiene, guanosine, squalene, cis megastigma-5,8-diene-4-one and sorbitol as prevalent compounds among the active extracts. Anti-quorum sensing activities of (ethyl acetate), (methanol) and (aqueous) extracts ranged from 4.81 - 58.34% with (ethyl-acetate) showing the highest activity. Molecular docking against CviR protein showed selected compounds having high docking scores with sorbitol showing the highest score of -7.04 kcal/mol. aqueous extract exhibited the highest biofilm inhibition (73%) against . , and compounds act as antagonist of N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) signaling, thus may serve as candidates in antipathogenic and antibiofilm phytomedicine development for MDR foot ulcer bacterial pathogens.