Antifungal activity of Albizia coriaria Welw ex Oliver and Erythrina abyssinica Lam. ex DC against Candida albicans

Abstract

An in vitro study was conducted to evaluate the antifungal effects of the different concentration levels of ethanolic stem bark extracts of Albizia coriaria and Erythrina abyssinica in controlling the growth of pathogenic Candida albicans. This study was conducted at the Microbiology Laboratory at the Department of Plant Sciences, Microbiology and Biotechnology, School of Biosciences, College of Natural Sciences, Makerere University. Muller Hinton agar was used to culture the pathogenic C. albicans. Different concentrations of ethanolic extracts (1000, 500, 250mg/ml) from each extract were used. Normal saline (DMSO) was used as a negative control while an intravenous antifungal drug was used as positive control. Muller-Hinton agar was amended with the extracts of A. coriaria, E. abyssinica and the combined mixture of the two plant extracts thus the mycelial growth of C. albicans was measured as Zones of inhibition using Agar Well Diffusion. All the extracts showed a very significant effect on reducing fungal growth at (P=0.05). The higher the extract concentration level, the less the fungal growth. Both the positive control (Fluconazole) and the combined mixture of the ethanolic extracts of A. coriaria and E. abyssinica had higher inhibitory properties compared to the individual ethanolic extracts of E. abyssinica and A. coriaria. The minimum inhibitory concentration of A. coriaria and E. abyssinica was at 125μl whilst that of the combined mixture of the extracts of E. abyssinica and A. coriaria was at 31.25μl using Broth Dilution Method. All ethanolic extracts of A. coriaria and E. abyssinica exhibited antifungal properties against C. albicans. The antifungal activity results of the test extracts of A. coriaria and E. abyssinica indicated that ethanolic extracts could reduce the growth of the fungus strains.