Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International

Persicaria odorata is a common plant and well known in Malaysia as “Daun kesum” that is commonly used in cuisines and has various medicinal properties. This study was conducted to investigate the antimicrobial activity and the extraction technique that produce the most active plant extract. The leaves were extracted using decoction, maceration assisted by ultra-sonication and percolation with soxhlet extractor to produce the respective extracts. All extracts were tested against four bacterial strains which included gram positive and gram negative bacteria using disc diffusion method. In this research gentamicin 10 μg were used as the antibacterial standard. The antimicrobial activity of the active extract was evaluated quantitatively using three different concentrations. The result from this study shows that Persicaria odorata leaves have high potential to be used as natural antibacterial agent against some bacterial infections depending on the method used to extract the active ingredient. The results shows that the extract obtained with percolation with soxhlet technique shows the best antibacterial activity followed by maceration with ultrasonication. Decoction extracts shows the weakest antibacterial activity. The extract obtain from both maceration with ultra-sonication and percolation using soxhlet extractor show significant (P=0.05) antimicrobial activity against all four bacteria (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, and Salmonella spp.).