In the local Malaysian context, herbal plants such as Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat Ali), Orthosiphon stamineus (MisaiKucing), Ficus deltoidea (Mas Cotek), Zingiber officinale (Halia Bara) and Barringtonia racemosa (Putat) are known and widely used for its therapeutic properties. The first part of this study aims to screen for the anti-protozoal activity of these herbal plant extracts against Blastocystis sp. isolate subtype (ST) 3. Herbal extract with the highest efficacy was further fractionized into water and ethyl acetate fractions and tested against ST1, ST3 and ST5 Blastocystis sp. isolates. These isolates were also exposed to allopathic drugs, Metronidazole (MTZ), Tinidazole, Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole(TMP-SMX), Ketoconazole and Nitazoxanide for comparison purpose.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.