Ethnobotanical and antimicrobial study of some selected medicinal plants used in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) as a potential source to cure infectious diseases

Background: Present investigation deals with antimicrobial screening of ten medicinally important plants used by the inhabitants of district Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) for different infectious diseases. Methods: Aqueous, n-hexane and ethanolic extracts of each plant were tested for their antimicrobial activity against both Gram positive and Gram negative strains of bacteria, as well as strain of yeast. Agar well diffusion and broth dilution methods were used to determine the antimicrobial activity of different plant extracts. Results: The results indicated that all plants exhibited antimicrobial activity against one or more test pathogens. Interestingly, extracts of three plants showed strong and broad spectrum activity as compared to rest of the extracts which demonstrated the moderate activity. On the whole ethanolic extracts exhibited maximum antimicrobial effect than their corresponding aqueous and n-hexane extracts, when compared with standard antibiotics i.e., Streptomycin and Tetracycline. Among various extracts, only ethanloic extract of Azadirachta indica and aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Eucalyptus globulus and Bergenia ciliata and ethanolic extract of Punica granatum were found to have potentially promising activity against test microorganisms. Conclusion: Different plant extracts show promising antimicrobial activity justifying their usage in traditional medicines. This study will be continued to identify more plants with potential antimicrobial components.