Despite the striking success of the pharmaceutical industries
in creating new antibiotics, finding new broadspectrum
antimicrobial agents is still a priority because of
resistant bacterial infections.
8 Antifungal agents currently
available in the market are limited due to their toxicity,
low effectiveness, and cost for prolonged treatment.
Therefore, there is a need to develop antifungal agents
which can satisfy the present scenario. The efficacies of
the extracts were also compared with the activity of the
standard antibiotic clotrimazole, available in the market.
The present results showed that, with the exception of one (L. nudiflora), all of the extracts were more promising
than the standard antifungal. Significant differences are normally observed when crude (unpurified) plant extracts
are compared with pure drugs.9 The agar-cup diffusion
method is commonly employed for preliminary susceptibility
testing, but it is not a dependable and accurate
method for comparison, because of the high degree of
interference due to drug diffusion problems.10 A more
generally accurate method of assessment is the broth
dilution technique. In this study, therefore, the broth
dilution method was used in determining the activities
measured as MIC. These observations point “to the fact
that in order to make” an affirmative conclusion on the
activity of a drug (especially a new product), strains of the
organisms from a wide variety of sources should be
employed at the evaluation stage