CITATION: amewo, E. B., et al. 2017. Anti-mycobacterium tuberculosis activity of polyherbal medicines used for the treatment of tuberculosis in Eastern Cape, South Africa. African Health Sciences, 17(3): 780-789, doi:10.4314/ahs.v17i3.21.The original publication is available at https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ahs/indexBackground: The emergence of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis has become a global public health problem.
Polyherbal medicines offer great hope for developing alternative drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis.
Objective: To evaluate the anti-tubercular activity of polyherbal medicines used for the treatment of tuberculosis.
Methods: The remedies were screened against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv using Middlebrook 7H9 media and MGIT BACTEC
960 system. They were liquid preparations from King Williams Town site A (KWTa), King Williams Town site B (KWTb),
King Williams Town site C (KWTc), Hogsback first site (HBfs), Hogsback second site (HBss), Hogsback third site (HBts), East
London (EL), Alice (AL) and Fort Beaufort (FB).
Results: The susceptibility testing revealed that all the remedies contain anti-tubercular activity with KWTa, KWTb, KWTc,
HBfs, HBts, AL and FB exhibiting more activity at a concentration below 25 μl/ml. Furthermore, MIC values exhibited inhibitory
activity with the most active remedies from KWTa, HBfs and HBts at 1.562 μg/ml. However, isoniazid showed more
inhibitory activity against M. tuberculosis at 0.05 μg/ml when compare to the polyherbal remedies.
Conclusion: This study has indicated that these remedies could be potential sources of new anti-mycobacterial agents against
M. tuberculosis. However, the activity of these preparations and their active principles still require in vivo study in order to assess
their future as new anti-tuberculosis agents.https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ahs/article/view/161253Publishers' Versio
