Abstract
The present work consists of the evaluation of antimicrobial activity and inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) of fixed oils and hexane extracts of nine fruits with the following native names: abiu (Pouteria caimito), acerola (Malpighia emarginata), araca (Psidium cattleianum), bacupari (Rheedia gardneriana), biriba (Rollinia mucosa), camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia), fruta-do-conde (Annona squamosa), graviola (Annona muricata) and tapereba (Spondias mombin L.). Different evaluations were carried out with different parts of the fruits, pulp, seed and barks. The antimicrobial assay was carried out with the following microorganisms: Candida albicans ATCC 18804, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 29212, Bacillus cereus ATCC 11778, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028. Of these microorganisms, the best inhibition results were obtained for yeast C. albicans with percent inhibition of 94.46% by tapereba barks extracts, acerola barks (87.12%), araca seed (85.23%) and tapereba pulp (85.22%). Against the bacteria tested, percent inhibition was low, showing that the extracts have good antifungal selectivity. Some extracts were able to inhibit the enzyme AChE and high percentage of inhibition was observed for the oils, especially from biriba barks, with 86.39% inhibition, tapereba seeds with 62.17% and acerola pulp with 52.18%. Methods of Multivariate Analysis were applied through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical component analysis (HCA), to establish correlations and groupings between the data obtained, justifying 82.3% of cases for pulps, 73.2% for the barks and 65.7% for the seeds according to the PCA. Key words: Bacteria, yeasts, Alzheimer, principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical component analysis (HCA).
Highlights
In Brazil there are ten thousand plants considered medicinal, aromatic and useful, but around 99.6% of these plants are little known about the chemical composition (Silva et al, 2002)
Many of these plant species have in their chemical composition secondary metabolites with a defensive function when they are attacked by certain microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, parasites or virus among others
Infectious diseases represent an important cause of morbidity and mortality in humans, especially in developing countries, and pharmaceutical industries have been motivated in recent years for the development of new antimicrobial drugs, especially due to the occurrence of microbial resistance to such diseases as the bacteria possess genetic ability and acquire resistance to drugs used as therapeutic agents (Nascimento et al, 2000)
Summary
In Brazil there are ten thousand plants considered medicinal, aromatic and useful, but around 99.6% of these plants are little known about the chemical composition (Silva et al, 2002). Many of these plant species have in their chemical composition secondary metabolites with a defensive function when they are attacked by certain microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, parasites or virus among others. The compounds with antibacterial action usually are terpenoids, phenolic compounds, alkaloids, polypeptics, coumarins and camphors, being extremely numerous and at the same time, their chemical structures present high selectivity and specificity (Simões, 2003; Reschke et al, 2007; Chen et al, 2015). Infectious diseases represent an important cause of morbidity and mortality in humans, especially in developing countries, and pharmaceutical industries have been motivated in recent years for the development of new antimicrobial drugs, especially due to the occurrence of microbial resistance to such diseases as the bacteria possess genetic ability and acquire resistance to drugs used as therapeutic agents (Nascimento et al, 2000)
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