Inhibitory effect of Allium sativum and Zingiber officinale extracts on clinically important drug resistant pathogenic bacteria

BACKGROUND: Herbs and spices are very important and useful as therapeutic agent against many pathological infections. Increasing multidrug resistance of pathogens forces to find alternative compounds for treatment of infectious diseases. METHODS: In the present study the antimicrobial potency of garlic and ginger has been investigated against eight local clinical bacterial isolates. Three types of extracts of each garlic and ginger including aqueous extract, methanol extract and ethanol extract had been assayed separately against drug resistant Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Shigella sonnei, Staphylococcusepidermidis and Salmonella typhi. The antibacterial activity was determined by disc diffusion method. RESULTS: All tested bacterial strains were most susceptible to the garlic aqueous extract and showed poor susceptibility to the ginger aqueous extract. The (minimum inhibitory concentration) MIC of different bacterial species varied from 0.05 mg/ml to 1.0 mg/ml. CONCLUSION: In the light of several socioeconomic factors of Pakistan mainly poverty and poor hygienic condition, present study encourages the use of spices as alternative or supplementary medicine to reduce the burden of high cost, side effects and progressively increasing drug resistance of pathogens.