Evaluation of the antibacterial activity of citrus juices : an in vitro study

Abstract EN

This work aimed at determining the antibacterial activity of three Citrus Juice on Staphylococ-cus aureus, Proteus vulgaris and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Materials and Methods : The antibacteri-al activities of juices of three types of Citrus (C.) fruit, C.

limon (lemon), C.

aurantium (bitter orange) and C.

paradisi (grapefruit), against some gram positive and gram negative bacteria using four concen-trations of these juices by agar diffusion method with measurement of diameter of the zone of inhibi-tion around the extracts.

Results: The results confirmed the presence of anti bacterial activity of the Citrus juice.

The highest inhibition zone (18 mm) was observed with a 10% concentration of C.

para-dises juice on Staphylococcus aureus, but Proteus vulgaris and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were resis-tant.

C.

limon and C.

aurantium juice at 10% and 5% concentration gave positive results with bacteri-cidal effects on the three tested bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Proteus vulgaris and Pseudomonas aeruginosa).

The zones of inhibition of C.

limon were 10, 12 and 13mm for 5% and 15, 21 and 20 mm for 10% respectively.

For C.

aurantium, they were 18, 19 and 20 mm for 5% concentration and 16, 19 and 19 mm for 10% concentration respectively.

Those effects were better than those produced by stan-dard antibiotic disc used for comparison.

Conclusions : The use of different concentrations of Citrus juice extracts had an effective antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Proteus vulgaris and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.