Clinical & Medical Biochemistry

Abstract

Antimicrobial Activity of Citronella Essential Oil on Antimicrobial Drug Resistant Bacteria from Veterinary Clinical Cases

Bhoj R Singh, Ravikant Agrawal, Prasannavadhana, Monika Bhardwaj and Sakshi Dubey

Study on citronella essential oil (CEO) sensitivity of 217 microbial strains of 65 species and isolated from animals with different disease conditions, revealed that citronella oil inhibited growth of only 10.6% strains. CEO inhibited Candida but of no Aspergillus strain. CEO inhibited 22 of 211 bacterial strains. Ampicillin was the least effective antibiotic and but inhibited 41.2% bacterial strains. Gram positive bacteria (GPBs) were 4.5 more sensitive (p, 0.0006) to CEO than Gram negative bacteria (GNBs). More GNB strains (p, 0.02) were multi-drug resistant (MDR) type than GPB strains. Probability of CEO resistant was high in MDR strains (p, 0.006). Most of the Brucella abortus strains had MDR (83.3%). Strains of swamp buffalo origin were more (p, 0.08) commonly CEO (96.6%) resistant than strains of dog (81.3%) origin. MDR was the maximum in abortion associated (51.2%) strains and minimum in diarrhoea associated strains (25%). The study indicated that CEO is not an effective antimicrobial against veterinary clinical isolates. Antimicrobial drug and CEO resistance patterns of bacteria were dependent on type of pathogen, its source and association with disease in animals and may be important for deciding an effective antimicrobial therapy.