Anti-microbial and Thrombolytic Activities of Different Solvent Extracts of Dracaena spicata

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge of herbal medicines for skin diseases like boils, eczema, scabies, septic abscess, itching and skin allergy, burns, chicken pox, warts and leucoderma, fungal and bacterial infections, including healing cuts and wounds has been documented by randomly interviewing Chakma, Marma and Tanchunga tribes of the hill tracts districts of Bangladesh since 1995. The plant Dracaena spicata has been used for the general promotion of health and longevity by Asian tribal(specially Chakma, Marma and Tanchunga). It is used as a traditional medicine for the treatment of various diseases cough, syphilis, conjunctivitis, constipation, pills prepared from the leaves are taken with warm water twice daily for the treatment of measles by the Chakma etc. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity and thrombolytic activity of Dracaena spicata. The antimicrobial activities of different solvent extract of Dracaena spicata plant were tested against the gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial strains by observing the zone of inhibition. The antimicrobial test was performed by disc diffusion method. The different solvent extract of Dracaena spicata plant showed moderate to good antimicrobial activities against the microorganisms at concentrations of 300 μg/disc. To check the efficacy of thrombolytic drugs or herbs one can compare the data with positive and negative control. In our study we took a known thrombolytic drug; streptokinase as a positive control and water as a negative control. The comparison of positive control with negative control clearly confirmed that clot dissolution does not occur when water was added to the clot. By comparing with this positive & negative control, a notable thrombolytic activity was observed after treating the clots with different solvent extracts of Dracaena spicata.