Antibacterial and antifungal activity of Lavandula angustifolia and Thymus vulgaris essential oils grown in the Algerian west coast

ABSTRACT

The screening of natural products in the quest for new antimicrobial and antifungal agents has become the need of the hour in order to combat drug-resistant pathogenic microbes.The aim was to evaluate the antibacterial and antifungal activities of Lavandula angustifolia and Thymus vulgaris essential oils (EOs).The antimicrobial activity was tested on Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus using agar disc diffusion and the antifungal screening was done in the same way against Candida albicans. The Thymus Vulgaris EO collected from Oran was very active against Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans. Lavandula angustifolia EO collected from Oran was extremely active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans, Candida albicans was the most sensitive to the essential oils. Essential oils of L. angustifolia and T. vulgaris are highly effective natural antibacterial and antifungal agents that can be used to treat infections and food poisoning.

KEYWORDS:

• Lavandula angustifolia
• Thymus vulgaris
• essential oils
• Algeria

Acknowledgments

We thank the Oran Hospital Microbiology Laboratory (CHUO) for providing us with bacteria strains. We are also grateful to the Pasteur Institute of Oran (Algeria) for providing us with fungus.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).