Assessing the antibiotic potential of essential oils against Haemophilus ducreyi

Lindeman, Zachary; Waggoner, Molly; Batdorff, Audra; Humphreys, Tricia L.

doi:10.1186/1472-6882-14-172

Assessing the antibiotic potential of essential oils against Haemophilus ducreyi

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/36246

Author(s)

Lindeman, Zachary

Waggoner, Molly

Batdorff, Audra

Humphreys, Tricia L.

Date Issued

May 27, 2014

Abstract

Background Haemophilus ducreyi is the bacterium responsible for the genital ulcer disease chancroid, a cofactor for the transmission of HIV, and it is resistant to many antibiotics. With the goal of exploring possible alternative treatments, we tested essential oils (EOs) for their efficacy as antimicrobial agents against H. ducreyi. Methods We determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of Cinnamomum verum (cinnamon), Eugenia caryophyllus (clove) and Thymus satureioides (thyme) oil against 9 strains of H. ducreyi using the agar dilution method. We also determined the minimum lethal concentration for each oil by subculturing from the MIC plates onto fresh agar without essential oil. For both tests, we used a 2-way ANOVA to evaluate whether antibiotic-resistant strains had a different sensitivity to the oils relative to non-resistant strains. Results All 3 oils demonstrated excellent activity against H. ducreyi, with MICs of 0.05 to 0.52 mg/mL and MLCs of 0.1-0.5 mg/mL. Antibiotic-resistant strains of H. ducreyi were equally susceptible to these 3 essential oils relative to non-resistant strains (p = 0.409). Conclusion E. caryophyllus, C. verum and T. satureioides oils are promising alternatives to antibiotic treatment for chancroid.

Journal

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Department

Biology

Citation

Lindeman et al.: Assessing the antibiotic potential of essential oils against Haemophilus ducreyi. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2014 14:172.

Publisher

BioMed Central Ltd

Version of Article

Published article

DOI

10.1186/1472-6882-14-172

ISSN

1472-6882

Rights

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Subjects

Haemophilus ducreyi

Chancroid

Essential oil

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