Isolation & Antimicrobial Screening of Ten Long Chain Aliphatic Compounds from Psidium guajava (Leaves)

For the millions of rural populations in countries of the developing world, diarrhoeal diseases continue to be the major cause of morbidity and mortality, with an estimated 1 billion episodes of illness and some 5 million or more deaths in children under 5 years (5-8). In such populations, preparations from herbs and plants remain the most common forms of treatment for diarrhoeal disease. Decoctions of the leaf, root or stem of the guava plant, Psidium guajava have been used as antidiarrahoeal therapy in many systems of traditional medicine in tropical countries. Psidium guajava Linn. is one of such medicinal plants. Belonging to the family Myrtaceae that is also used as a source of food. Ten new aliphatic compounds pentapentacont-17, 31-diol (1), 11-hydroxy-tricont-35- pentatriacontanoate (2), 34-octahexacontanol (3), heptatriacont-8-ol (4), 14,15-dimethyl (cyclopropayl)-9-oloctadecayl- 3-(4-hydroxyphenyl) propanoate (5), hexaeicosan-16-ol (6), pentatetracosan-10, 25-diol (7), untricontan-11, 19-diol (8), tricosan -17-ene-5-ol (9), and nonacosan-23-ene-3-ol (10) isolated from the ethanol extract of the leaves of P. guajava. All compounds exhibited moderate activity against Staphylococcus aureus and poor activity against Shigella spp and Klebsiella pneumoniae. The plant can be used for the formulation of oral antibacterial drugs to manage surgical, skin and soft tissue infections.

Author(s): B K Mehta, Ritu Nigam*, Varsha Nigam and Asheesh Singh

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