Correlation between chemical composition and antibacterial activity of essential oils of some aromatic medicinal plants growing in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Introduction
Essential oils of aromatic plant species are used in industries for the production of soaps, perfumes and toiletries. Many of them are also used in traditional medicine for various purposes.
Investigations on the evaluation of the biological activities of essential oils of some medicinal plant species have revealed that some of them exhibited interesting activities such as insecticidal (Kambu et al. 1982), antibacterial and antifungal (Chaumont and Bardey, 1989, Hammouchi et al., 1990, Lemos et al., 1990, Ferdous et al., 1992, Faouzia et al., 1993, Demetzos et al., 1997), antinoceptive (Santos et al., 1998, Souza et al., 1998), spasmolytic (De La Puerta and Herrera, 1995, Mazzati et al., 1998) and antiplasmodial (Benoit-Vical et al., 2001). Mainly, active principles of essential oils with antibacterial or antifungal activity were also isolated and identified (Onawunmi et al., 1984, Hinou et al., 1989, Oloke et al., 1988, Hammerschmidt et al., 1993, Zakarya et al., 1993, Carson and Riley, 1995).
Although some Aframomum species, Eucalyptus species, Cymbopogon species, Monodora species and Ocimum species collected in different geographic areas in the world such as Morocco (Benouda and Hassar, 1988, Zakarya et al., 1993), Nigeria (Oyedeji et al., 1999) and India (Prassad et al., 1986, Dikshit and Hussain, 1984) were reported to exhibit antibacterial activity in vitro against some human and animal pathogen microorganisms, to our knowledge, no report about the same biological activity for the same species growing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R. Congo) was found in the literature. However, these aromatic plant species are extensively used in the D.R. Congo in traditional medicine to treat cough, pneumonia, tuberculosis, upper respiratory tract infections, fever and skin diseases (Kambu, 1990).
Thus 15 Congolese aromatic plant species were selected and their essential oils investigated for their chemical composition and for their putative antibacterial activity in vitro against 11 bacteria (×2).
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Plant materials
Fresh seeds of Monodora myristica were bought in the market. Other remaining fresh plant parts were collected in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo between February and December 1989. All plants were identified by N. Nlandu of the Institut National d'Etudes et de Recherches en Agronomie (INERA) of the University of Kinshasa. A voucher specimen for each plant has been deposited in the herbarium of this institute (Table 1).
Obtention and chemical analysis of essential oils
The essential oils were prepared by hydrodistillation
Results
The relative amount (% w/w) of essential oils from 15 selected Congolese aromatic plant species presented in Table 1 varied from 0.2 to 1.9%. The highest value of essential oil was obtained for the fresh leaves of Eucalyptus globulus and E. citriodora (1.87 and 1.63%, respectively) while the lowest was for the fresh leaves of E. robusta and Ocimum americanum, E. deglupta and Ocimum gratissimum (0.13 and 0.15%, respectively). A chemical analysis of these essential oils by GC and GC–MS lead to
Discussion and conclusions
Yields of different essential oils from fresh plant materials of some selected Congolese aromatic plants species are given in Table 1 and varied greatly from one species to another. Difference with these yields compared to those previously reported in the literature for the same aromatic plants such as Eucalyptus, Cymbopogon and Ocimum species collected in other geographic areas in the world could be attributed to some factors such as climate, nature of the sol, age of the tree, time of
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Pharmacists Konde, L. and Muleka B. for their technical assistance and to the staff of the Laboratoire des Cliniques Universitaires du Mont Amba, Université de Kinshasa for the antibacterial testing.
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