In vitro Evaluation of Antibacterial Activity of Various Crude Leaf Extracts of Indian Sacred Plant, Ocimum sanctum L.

The medical world is on an immense requirement to discover novel antibiotics due to widespread emergence of resistance among microbial pathogens against currently available antibiotics. Traditional plants have been proved to be better source in the search for novel antimicrobial compounds. In such effort, we accessed the susceptibilities of some clinically significant bacterial species against various extracts made up from leaves of Ocimum sanctum L. (family: Lamiaceae). Antibacterial activity of crude extracts was found to be reliant on the nature of extract and the bacterial strains evaluated. Methanol extract was found to have comparatively higher activity than other organic and aqueous extracts. Gram-positive bacteria showed variable susceptibilities while Gram-negative Salmonella typhi has shown to be completely resistance to all the tested extracts. Minimum inhibitory concentration data showed hopeful results as some of the extracts exhibited significant inhibitions of bacteria even at low concentrations. This study indicated that leaves of Ocimum sanctum L. have significant antibacterial activity and it could be very useful in the discovery of novel antibacterial/antimicrobial agents.