Medicinal Properties of Dacryodes edulis against Selected Clinical Bacterial Isolates

The medicinal properties of Dacryodes edulis was investigated to determine the antimicrobial
properties of the collected raw D. edulis pulp and seed extracts on some medically important human
pathogens. The research was investigated against the selected human pathogens using standard
microbiological and biochemical procedures. The D. edulis samples were harvested aseptically
between the periods of April to June 2016 from its tree located at IBB way, Calabar Municipality,
Nigeria. The aqueous and ethanolic extracts of the seed and pulp at varying concentrations of 1 g/10
ml, 2 g/10 ml, 4 g/10 ml, 5 g/10 ml was tested against some selected human pathogens such as
Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumonia, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas
aeruginosa and Proteus vulgaris. The antimicrobial susceptibility results of the ethanol extracts of D.
edulis seed showed marginally higher zones of inhibition to the clinical bacterial isolates tested than
the ethanol extract of the pulp tested against the same clinical isolates. The organisms were resistant
to the aqueous extracts of both the pulp and seed. The seed ethanol extracts showed a higher zone
of inhibition of 21 mm against K. pneumoniae and 18 mm against P. vulgaris as compared to 18 mm
as against K. pneumoniae and 17 mm against P. vulgaris showed by Gentamycin used as standard
antibiotic control. The result of these has shown that D. edulis could be of immense importance in our
nation’s young pharmaceutical industry for the development of new chemotherapeutic agent to
address unmet therapeutic needs.