Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Activities of SomeMedicinal Smokes Prescribed in Iranian TraditionalMedicine for Catarrh

Microbial resistance has recently become one of the major healthcare problems worldwide. Finding new sources of chemical active antimicrobial compounds, along with what has been produced by fungi is now a common approach to solve this problem. On the other hand, inflammation has recently been considered as an underlying factor of many diseases, and working on anti-inflammatory drugs is interesting as well. Information provided by Iranian traditional medicine (ITM) can be used as a source of inspiration in order to find the herbs with
antimicrobial and antioxidant activity.

The present study aimed to examine antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of 6 medicinal smokes prescribed in ITM for catarrh.

Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Escherichia coli ATCC 8739, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 9027, Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6051, Candida albicans ATCC 10231, and Aspergillus niger ATCC 16404 were used in this study. In addition, the preliminary antimicrobial activity of Commiphora myrrha, Cinnamomum cassia, Costus arabicus, Nigella sativa, Pimpinella anisum, and Tetraclinis articulate was performed by the disc diffusion method. Further, the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum lethal concentration were determined using the microdilution method. Finally, antioxidant activity was evaluated by measuring the reduction of the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl solution.

The results showed that C. arabicus, C. cassia, and P. anisum had considerable antimicrobial activities. Furthermore, antioxidant evaluation of the herbal smokes demonstrated the lowest IC50 for C. cassia (10.44 µg/mL), C. myrrha (13 µg/mL), and C. arabicus (15.16 µg/ mL).

In general, herbal medicinal smokes were found to have interesting antimicrobial and antioxidant activities. Therefore, more investigation on these smokes would be fruitful.