Phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activity of Azima Tertacantha

Abstract

The use of medicinal plants as a source for relief from illness can be traced back over five millennia to written documents of the early civilization in China and the Near east, but it is doubtless an art as old as mankind. Nowadays the plants are widely used for medicinal purposes. Many microorganisms induce variety of diseases. So the medicinal herb is the only way to treat diseases because microorganisms are becoming resistant to the commercial drugs. In the present study chloroform, acetone, ethanol and aqueous extracts of Azima tetracantha were tested for the presence of phytochemicals and potential antimicrobial efficacy against a few bacterial pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus sp and klebsiella sp by using agar well diffusion method. Ethanol extract of Azima tetracantha showed considerably moderate activity against all the microorganisms tested.