Assessment of Commiphora wightii (Arn.) Bhandari (Guggul) as potential source for antibacterial agent

Abstract

There is a great need to discover novel antibiotics due to wide-spread emergence of resistance among 
pathogenic bacteria against available antibiotics. The current study deals to access the susceptibilities 
of some clinically significant bacteria against various crude extracts of Commiphora wightii gum resin. 
Agar well diffusion assay was the key process to evaluate the antibacterial potential of various crude 
extracts of the plant. Active crude extracts were further subjected to determine MIC against susceptible 
bacteria. The study indicated that antibacterial activity was found to be dependent on the type of extract 
and the organism evaluated. Ethanol extract was found to have comparatively higher activity than other 
organic and aqueous extracts. Gram-positive bacteria showed competent but variable susceptibilities 
to all the tested extracts. MIC data showed hopeful results as some of the extracts exhibited significant 
inhibitions of bacteria even at low concentrations. Phytochemical analysis of the active extract reveals 
the presence of certain metabolites. Commiphora wightii gum resin is shown to have promising 
antibacterial activity that could be very useful in the discovery of novel antibiotic.