EVALUATION OF ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF STONES OF ZIZIPHUS JUJUBA

Dr. Dhanapal Venkatachalam*

ABSTRACT

The plant Ziziphus jujuba is widely used in Ayurvedic system of medicine as delicious fruit and an effective herbal remedy. It used as liver tonic, diuretic, emollient, expectorant, anticancer, sedative, as blood purifier and in treatment of diarrhoea. Through literature survey it has been revealed that the paste of the stones of the plant is beneficial in treatment of ringworm infection. Thus, the study is carried out in order to determine the antifungal (ringworm) activity of the stones of the plant. The stones of the plant are subjected to extraction with water and ethanol. The antifungal activity was carried out using agar well diffusion method. All the plant extracts were compared with standard Clotrimazole (1% w/w) as positive control and distilled water, ethanol used as negative control. Accordingly ethanolic extract of the roots was found to more effective against Trichophyton rubrum as compared to aqueous extract.

Keywords: Antifungal, Clotrimazole, Trichophyton rubrum, Ziziphus jujuba.