Antimicrobial screening of some medicinal plants

Plants were collected from several states of México and dried in the shade, ground and extracted with water, methanol or chloroform. The antimicrobial activity of the crude extracts was tested against E. coli, S. aureus, S. lutea, P. vulgaris and C. albicans using the agar diffusion technique. A methanol extract of E. polistachia showed antimicrobial activity against all microorganisms used in this study to doses in the order of 400 μg. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.