Synergistic Activity of Garlic with Ampicillin against Sphylococcus aureus

Abstract

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most frequent causes of skin infections with the emergence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus auerus (MRSA), to multiple antimicrobial agents. Garlic is used as natural spice use as a medicine as well, against many clinical pathogens. Garlic (Allium sativum) is claimed to retard development of resistance and produce synergy with conventional antibiotics. The study was conducted to investigate the inhibitory effect of alcoholic extract of Garlic on inhibition of growth of Staphylococcus aureus as well as synergistic activity of fresh garlic extract with ampicillin. We screened the clinical isolates of S. aureus for susceptibility/ resistance against commonly prescribed antibiotics by using agar well diffusion method, disk diffusion method, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) Furthermore, we tested garlic solely and in combination with ampcillin to find possible synergistic antimicrobial effects by checkerboard method. Staphylococcus aureusbecame resistant to standard antibiotic ampicillin and gave zone of inhibition 8mm and 10 mm which is considered as resistant whereas, zone of garlic are 21mm and 25mm. The MIC of garlic is obtained at the concentration of 14.4 mg/ ml and through checkerboard the result we obtained indicates the highly synergistic activity of garlic and ampicillin. Statistical analysis of garlic synergism with ampicillin had been proved. Garlic can be used as additive in the preperation of different antibiotics to produce their effectiveness against different pathogens.