An-Najah Staff

Streptococcus pneumoniae is one of the most important bacterial pathogens that affect respiratory system. The occurrence of multidrug-resistant strains of S. pneumoniae necessitates the discovery of new classes of anti-pneumonia drugs. As some of the medicinal plants and their extracts have antibacterial activity, we aimed to investigate the antibacterial potential of five Palestinian wild medicinal plants including Echinops adenocaulos, Parietaria judaica, Urtica urens, Verbascum fruticulosum and Vitex agnus-castus against multidrug-resistant strain of S. pneumoniae, which was screened for its antibiotic resistance profile showing 67% resistance of the tested antibiotics. In this research micro-broth dilution method was used to study the inhibitory activity of ethanol, distilled water and Zamzam water extracts of all plants under investigation. The obtained results showed that all Zamzam extracts of the five studied plant species inhibited the growth of S. pneumoniae. It was clearly noticed that there was a difference in the antibacterial activity between distilled water and Zamzam water extracts recording higher activity in the Zamzam water extract of some of the studied plant species. Verbascum fruticulosum distilled water extract was the most effective one with MIC equal to 0.195 mg/ml. In general, both water extracts were more bioactive than the ethanol extracts for all the examined plants. These results confirmed the possibility of using these plant species in medicine and pharmaceutical industry of new drugs for the treatment of multidrug-resistant clinical isolates of S. pneumoniae.