Anti-yeast activities of Origanum oil against human pathogenic yeasts英文文献资料.docVIP

Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology, 2011, 2, 103-107 ABB doi:10.4236/abb.2011.22016 Published Online April 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/abb/). Anti-yeast activities of Origanum oil against human pathogenic yeasts Amber Adams, Satyanshu Kumar, Marck Clauson, Shivendra Sahi* Department of Biology, Western Kentucky University, Kentucky, USA. Email: shiv.sahi@ Received 8 October 2010; revised 21 February 2011; accepted 1 March 2011. ABSTRACT patients. C. albicans, an opportunistic fungal pathogen, resides commensally in the mucocutaneous cavities of skin, vagina and intestine of humans [2]. It is one of the most frequent causes of fungal infections under altered physiological and pathological conditions like infancy, pregnancy, diabetes, prolonged broad-spectrum antibi- otic administration, steroidal chemotherapy and AIDS [3]. Whereas, C. neoformans is a basidiomycetous fun- gus infecting immunocompromised patients. Infection starts from the lungs and migrates to the central nervous system resulting in meningoencephalitis. Fluconazole, a fungistatic agent, has been used successfully to treat fungal infections caused by C. albicans and other related Candida species. However, emergence of intrinsically resistant species like Candida glabrata and Candida krusei to azoles is a worrisome development [4]. Human fungal infections mainly among immunocompromised patients have increased at an alarming rate during recent times [5], thereby warranting the need to identify and develop potent anti-yeast agents with broad spectrum activities. Origanum, comprising a wide range of species and subspecies, are valuable sources of spices and essential oils with the latter possessing broad spectrum antimicro- bial properties [6-8]. Gram negative and positive bacte- ria and their antibiotic resistant strains have shown sus- ceptibility to the Oregano essential oil (OEO) [9]. Fu