Atividade antibacteriana do óleo essencial de Croton tetradenius Baill frente a espécies de bactérias patogênicas

Abstract

Medicinal plants of northeastern Caatinga are widely used in folk medicine by local communities, due to the therapeutic potential they present. Bacterial resistance to multiple drugs has increased in recently due to the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, generating the need for new broad spectrum drugs. Essential oils are known to be complex mixtures of volatile, lipophilic and odorous organic compounds that have numerous constituents due to secondary metabolites. This work aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of Croton tetradenius (Euphorbiaceae) essential oil collected in the municipality of Triunfo-PE, obtained from the leaves by the hydrodistillation process. The evaluation was made by the paper disc diffusion method, in Petri plates, containing the MüellerHinton Agar medium, sown with bacterial suspensions previously adjusted to a 0.5 of the Mac Farland scale of three isolates. Discs containing 10 L and 15 L of the undiluted essential oil were added to the plates and incubated at 36 °C for 24 hours. Paper discs with the antibiotic Amikacin 30 μg/disc were used as positive control. The tests were performed in triplicates and the inhibition halos established in the average of the halos measured for each species of bacteria. The results show that Croton tetradenius essential oil has antimicrobial activity against the tested isolates Staphylococus aureus and Escherichia coli, except for Klebsiella pneumoniae which was resistant to the tested essential oil.