Antimicrobial Effect of Cyclamen persicum Tuber Extracts Against Bacteria and Candida Species

The antimicrobial resistant microorganisms will take us again to an era where a simple infection could lead to serious illness and death, interest in using medicinal plants as a source of new antimicrobials has increased. Cyclamen persicum is a traditional medicinal plant that showed to have some medicinal effects. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the antimicrobial effect of C. persicum tuber water, acetone, ethanol and methanol extracts on different pathogenic bacteria and candida. It was found that C. persicum tuber acetone, ethanol and methanol extracts have antibacterial effect on many Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria specially S. pyogenes, S. aureus, E. faecalis, P. mirabilis, K. pneumoniae, E. cloacae, P. aeruginosa and S. flexneri. C. persicum tuber acetone, ethanol and methanol extracts also showed great antifungal effect against all Candida used in this study. The study also reported extracting saponin from C. persicum tubers methanol extract. Keywords: Cyclamen persicum tubers, Antimicrobial effect, Saponin.