Antibacterial efficacy of some essential oils in combination with locally used disinfectants against clinical and environmental strains of Staphylococcus spp.

Abstract

Through a period of three months ( October to December, 2014), 37 clinical and environmental Staphylococcus isolates were collected from three different hospitals in Baghdad (Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Fattima-AL-Zahra Hospital for Pediatric and Obstetricand AL-Kindi Teaching Hospital), 25(67.57%) isolates were from clinical specimens and 12(32.43%) isolates were from hospital environment. out of 37 isolates, 28(75.68%) isolates were Coagulase-Negative Staphylococci (CONS) while 9 (24.32%) isolates were Staphylococcus aureus (coagulase-positive staphylococci). Three different disinfectants commonly used in our hospitals were tested to determine the antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus isolates and the result in showed a high level resistance of Staphylococcus isolates to the disinfectants under test when used alone. The result also showed that the concentrated SURFANIOS and Sekulyse disinfectants were more effective on the Staphylococcus isolates under test in comparison to the diluted concentration of those disinfectants.

Antibacterial activity of Syzygium aromaticum (cloves oil), Eucalyptus globules (calptus oil) and Rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary oil) was done in different concentrations (100, 50, 25 and 12,25 mg/ml) for each essential oil. The findings revealed that the cloves oil is the only essential oil which had antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus spp.strains in the 100,50and 25 mg/ml concentrations, while the other two essential oils have no antibacterial activity against studied isolates. The antibacterial activity of essential oils in combination with disinfectants against Staphylococci strains were observed using agar well diffusion method and the result showed that the essential oils in combination with disinfectants showed considerably more antibacterial activity than the essential oils and disinfectants alone when compared with them.