Antimicrobial potentials of essential oils extracted from West African aromatic plants on common skin infections

During the last decade, the advent of multi-drug resistant pathogens responsible for skin infections tends to make conventional treatments obsolete. Even though many studies have reported the antimicrobial properties of essential oils (EOs), the inconsistent use of various susceptibility testing methods has made information on antimicrobial potential of many EO varieties fragmentary. Using a single method approach, the objective of this work was to assess and to compare the antibacterial and antifungal properties, against skin pathogens, of EOs extracted from West African aromatic plants. Twenty-three plant samples collected in Benin and Burkina Faso were screened against 20 bacterial and fungal isolates obtained from skin lesions. Activity was evaluated by the determination of minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs), with readings facilitated by the use of resazurin, a blue dye metabolized into pink resorufin by viable cells. Following this screening, nine EOs were found particularly active with MICs lower than 0.35% v/v. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis was used to deter- mine the phytochemical profile of these active EOs which were found exceptionally rich in oxygenated monoterpenes, especially aldehydes, alcohols or phenols and their derivatives. Through this study, we demonstrated that several West African EOs have a significant an- timicrobial potential which could, however, be considerably impacted by plant growing or harvesting place due to phytochemical composition variation. These EOs, even if their antimicrobial effects appeared lower than those of conventional antibiotics, constitute easily available mixtures of active compounds and could nevertheless be considered, in the context of increasing multidrug resistance, as complementary or alternative therapies in common skin infections management.