The unceasing emerging of multidrug-resistant bacteria imposes a global foremost human health threat
and discovery of new alternative remedies are necessity. The use of plant essential oil in the treatment of
many pathogenic bacteria is promising. Acne vulgaris is the most common skin complaint that fears
many people about their aesthetic appearance. In this work we investigated the antibacterial activity
of some plant oils against acne-inducing bacteria. Three bacterial isolates were identified from Egypt, biochemically
and by means of 16s rRNA gene typing, and were designated as Staphylococcus aureus EG-AE1,
Staphylococcus epidermidis EG-AE2 and Cutibacterium acnes EG-AE1. Antibiotic susceptibility test showed
resistance of the isolates to at least six antibiotics, yet they are still susceptible to the last resort
Vancomycin. In vitro investigations of eleven Egyptian plant oils, identified tea tree and rosemary oils
to exhibit antibacterial activity against the antibiotic-resistant acne isolates. Inhibition zones of
15 ± 0.5, 21.02 ± 0.73 and 20.85 ± 0.76 mm was detected when tea tree oil applied against the abovementioned
bacteria respectively, while inhibition zones of 12.5 ± 1.5, 15.18 ± 0.38 and 14.77 ± 0.35 m
m were detected by rosemary oils. Tea tree and rosemary oils exhibited bacteriostatic and bactericidal
activity against all the strains with MICs/MBCs ranging between 39-78 mg/L for tea tree oil and 39–
156 mg/L for rosemary oil. All the isolates were killed after 4 and 6 h upon growing with 200 mg/L of
tea tree and rosemary oils, respectively. Additionally, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS)
profiling identified and detected a variable number of antimicrobial compounds in both oils.
2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
