An Investigation of Antimicrobial and Wound-Healing Potentials of Boesenbergia rotunda

The antimicrobial activity accelerates the wound-healing process by preventing the wound against the microorganism infections as previously reported¹. The purposes of this study are to evaluate antimicrobial potentials of Boesenbergia rotunda (L.) Mansf. ] from rhizome extracts against the common microorganisms causing skin infections, and to validate the wound healing activity in rats. The antimicrobial activity of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Boesenbergia rotunda rhizomes has been tested against selected six bacterial and two fungal strains using a broth microdilution method to determine the minimal inhibition concentrations (MIC) and the minimal microbicidal concentrations (MMC). Both extracts possessed potential antimicrobial and antifungal activities by inhibiting gram positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633 and fungi Candida albicans ATCC 10231 and Sacharomyces cerevisiae. MIC and MMC varied from 0.039 to 25mg/ml and 0.156 to 25mg/ml, respectively and all the microorganisms were more sensitive to ethanolic extracts than aqueous extracts. In the wound-healing studies, the topical application of 20% ethanolic extract has indicated a significantly increased percentage of wound contraction (83.49%) on day 14 compared to the control groups (71.9%). The results of histological evaluation have confirmed a remarkable wound healing activity of Boesenbergia rotunda.

Acknowledgement: This research was financially supported by Faculty of Medicine, Thammasat University Research Fund.

References: 1. Srinivas Reddy B et al. (2008)J Ethnopharmacol 115:249–256