Abstract
Nigella sativa L. is a plant with high medicinal profile in the treatment of diseases. This study aimed to assess the chemical composition and in vitro antibacterial and cytotoxic effect of Nigella sativa L. seed extract. Seeds were purchased from supermarket and blended into powder using electric blender. The powder was macerated with 96% methanol. The extracts were then qualitatively screened to test the presence of secondary metabolites and agar well diffusion method was employed to study the antibacterial activity of extracts. In this evaluation, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used to examine the cytotoxic effect of extract on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). MTT assay was done on different extract concentrations for 3 days and the results were recorded daily. The findings revealed the presence of tannins, terpenoids, steroids, saponins, alkaloids, phenolic compounds and flavonoids. The antibacterial activity was observed with the inhibition zones ranging from 11.3 ±1.1 to 16.3 ±1.5mm while the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of extract ranged between 0.5 and 1.25 μg/mL. The black seed extracts contain bioactive substances with germicidal activity and in vitro administration of black seed extract up to the dose of 100 μg/mL resulted no cytotoxic effect on PBMCs.
Highlights
The unreasonable utilization of antibiotics, long-term consumption and inappropriate treatment and prevention measures are the culprits that accelerate the resistance of different pathogenic microorganisms to commercial antibiotics (Soni & Sosa, 2013)
This could be emphasized by the fact that S. aureus American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) 29213 showed great sensitivity with 16.3 mm of inhibition zone and P. aeruginosa demonstrated low but enough sensitivity with 11.4 mm of inhibition diameter as shown on figure 1
The black seed extracts didn’t show any effect on the proliferation of normal human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) during the period of three days and the used concentrations of extract as indicated by the results presented in table 3
Summary
The unreasonable utilization of antibiotics, long-term consumption and inappropriate treatment and prevention measures are the culprits that accelerate the resistance of different pathogenic microorganisms to commercial antibiotics (Soni & Sosa, 2013). The increased ability of pathogenic microbes to develop a resistance to the effects of antimicrobial medications is considered as a global health threat that requires extensive and collaborative researches to find an alternative source of antimicrobial products to synthetic chemical treatments (Ugur et al, 2016). Medicinal plants have many bioactive compounds with great pharmacological importance. It has been documented a long time ago that different herbs and the extracts from their diverse parts have varying degrees of antimicrobials with therapeutic potential (Islam et al, 2012). World Health Organization (WHO) has permitted countries to integrate herbal medicine in their health care systems (WHO, 2013)
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