The antibacterial activity of the ethyl acetate extracts of seven marine sponges
collected from Tunisian Mediterranean coast (Monastir) was tested against eight human pathogenic
bacteria and six human pathogenic fungi using the agar disk diffusion method. The results
showed that 90% of the sponge extracts presented significant activity against at least one
bacterial strain and only 20% were active against fungi. Sponge extracts of Agelas oroides and
Axinella damicornis appeared to be quite promising due to their capacity to inhibit the growth of
Pseudomonas aeruginosa and gentamycin resistant strains Listeria monocytogenes and Enterococcus
feacalis as well as a broad-spectrum activity against all the other bacteria. The antifungal
activity of these sponge extracts is not so interesting, in fact only three among seven sponge
extracts showed moderate activity against fungal strains. Agelas oroides showed an interesting
antibacterial activity and had also a moderate activity against fungal strains tested in this study.
These promising results in relation with antibacterial and antifungal activity in vitro open the way
for complementary investigation in order to purify and identify active molecules.
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