STUDIES ON THE ANTIMICROBIAL, CHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS AND PROXIMATE PROPERTIES FOR UVARIA CHAMAE STEM (P. BEAUV)

ABSTRACT

The need to explore natural supply of novel antimicrobial agent has increased in the past three decades. An observed shift from synthetic antimicrobial agent to natural products of plant origin may be due in part to the growing resistance of microorganism to the few existing synthetic antimicrobial agent. This study determined the antimicrobial activity, proximate, phytochemical, as well as GC-MS analyses of the ethyl acetate extract of Uvaria chamae stem. Antimicrobial activity of the stem extract was evaluated against selected clinical bacterial and fungal isolates (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella aerogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Bacillus subtilis, Candida albicans and Aspergillus nigra) using agar-well diffusion/ agar dilution methods. Proximate, phytochemical and GCMS analyses were carried out with standard methods. Result obtained showed a brown coloured extract with a yield of 1.785%. The extract showed activity against most test microorganisms with inhibition zone diameter range of 14mm to 25mm. Phytochemical and proximate studies revealed the presence of alkaloids, saponins, phenols, reducing sugar as well as carbohydrate (77.75%), crude protein (3.78%) and crude fibre (1.47%) respectively. Approximately 20 chemical constituents were present in the extract with eight predominant peaks accounting for 92.13% and other peaks making up the balance. This study has shown that ethyl acetate extract of Uvaria chamae stem possessed antimicrobial activity and the powdered samples were observed to have high nutritional value. Thus, our study has established a scientific proof for the traditional use of Uvaria chamae stem in the treatment of infections and the potential of the stem in food and pharmaceutical industries