Antibacterial Activities of Ephedra sinica Herb Extract on Standard and Clinical Strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

    Ephedra sinica Stapf (Ephedraceae) is one of the most important plants in traditional medicine and medicinally important as the botanical origin of crude drugs. The main active constituents of Ephedra sinica are the unique and taxonomically restricted adrenergic agonist’s phenylpropylamino alkaloids, also known as ephedrine alkaloids: norephedrine, norpseudoephedrine, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, methylephedrine and methylpseudoephedrine.

In this study, ethanolic and hydroalcoholic herb extract of Ephedra sinica was assayed against on standard and clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria activities and then the MIC and MBC were assayed.

   The results were shown that the lowest MIC of ethanolic herb extract of Ephedra sinica on clinical and standard Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria respectively was 25 and 12.5 μg/ml but the lowest MIC of the hydroalcoholic herb extract were 25 and 25 μg/ml respectively. The lowest MBC of ethanolic herb extract on clinical and standard strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosawere 50 and 25 μg/ml,  respectively. But, the lowest MBC of the hydroalcoholic herb extract against clinical and standard strains was 25 and 25 μg/ml.

   Based on these results, suggest to antibacterial activity have to use hydroalcoholic herb extract that the toxicities of purified extracts of these plants need to study and hopefully improved traditional medicines will be developed.