Volume9,Issue11

S.marcescens is opportunistic pathogens that cause nosocomical infections. There have been many reports concerning the identification, antibiotic susceptibility, pathogenicity, epidemiological investigations and typing of this organism. Accurate identification is important in defining outbreaks. In the present study, S. marcescens have been selected from the natural sources and were then confirmed with 16S rRNA identification method with cultures of MTCC. To investigate these S. marcescens isolates, random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used in conjunction with the specific primers. The RAPD patterns for each isolate were identified on the basis of identical numbers and sizes of the bands. And by using dendrogram we can able to show, that the pattern of the primers to separate isolates was closely related to their sequence homology with the genome and their amount of guanine and cytosine nucleotide content. S. marcescens as a pathogen shows a tissue-damaging capacity. The cytotoxic activity is mainly elicited by the secreted hemolysin/cytotoxin ShlA. Here, the isolates were tested for hemolytic activity. S. marcescens is known to be frequently resistant to various antibiotics and our results also showed such a tendency.

In the present time, a phenomenal increase in the demand for herbal medicine has been observed and a need has been felt for insuring the quality, safety and efficacy of herbal drug preparations. Standardisation is one of the tools for the assessment of quality, purity and efficacy which includes preliminary phytochemical screening, fingerprint profile using biomarkers corroborated with modern analytical techniques. HPTLC has established itself as an important tool for handling the qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative phytochemical analysis of herbal drugs and formulations due to its simplicity, flexibility, reliability and cost efficient separation.  Four ayurvedic formulations Nimbadi Churna (Vyas Pharmaceuticals), Pushyanug Churna (Baidyanath Ayurved Bhavan), Khadirarishta (Sandu Pharmaceuticals Ltd.), Trifla Ghrita (AVS Kottakkal) have been selected in the present study. The use of these formulations varies from blood purification, bleeding disorders to eye related diseases. These also act as anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and anthelmintic agents. Berberine is one of the major constituents in all the selected formulations. The major therapeutic activity of berberine is for the treatment of infection and inflammation, however, the antidiabetic potential of berberine is also under scrutiny. In the present study, quantitative determination of berberine was carried out in all the formulations by TLC densitometric analysis. Further, the anti-diabetic activity of these formulations was evaluated by streptozotocin (STZ) induced rats using glimepiride and berberine as a standard drug. All the formulations at a dose level of 45 mg/kg showed significant hypoglycemic activity and formulation-III, showed better activity as compared to the standard drug. Hence these formulations can be used in the treatment of diabetes beyond their usual activities.

The spectrum of antibacterial activities shown by fatty acid fractions of different microalgae, depending on the unsaturation pattern and chain length are still need to be explored. This study provides information on the fatty acid composition of three microalgae, Chlorella marina, Nannochloropsis occulata and Chaetoceros affinis along with their antibacterial activities against selected clinical and fish pathogens. PUFA content of fatty acid fractions followed the order N. occulata > C. affinis > C. marina. Greater abundance of eicosapentanoic acid found in Nannochloropsis occulata (27.39 ± 0.15%) and Chaetoceros affinis (25.34 ± 0.23%) might be responsible for higher bacterial inhibition shown by these fractions.

The tree species of Adansonia digitata L. possesses wide range of medicinal properties effective against various infectious diseases. The present work has been under taken to study the antibacterial activity of different extracts of A. digitata against pathogenic bacteria. Antibacterial activity of methanolic extracts of leaf, flower and fruit wall extracts of A. digitata has been studied to find out their activity against pathogenic bacteria viz., Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Enterobacter aerogenus. The activity of these extracts of different plant parts against both positive as well as negative pathogenic bacterial strains was screened through well diffusion technique by using minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) method. According to our observations, all the extracts of A. digitata exhibited antibacterial activity against all the pathogenic bacteria under study except the fruit wall extracts which didn’t show any inhibition against K. pneumonia. Thus, results provided evidence that the species A. digitata can be used as a potential source of antibacterial agent in the treatment of various infectious diseases.