Affiliation:
1. Department of Zoology, Karnatak University, Dharwad (Karnataka) India
Abstract
Medicinal value of earthworms has been known since centuries, this is evident from history of ancient southeastern countries like China, Japan and
Vietnam. The present study was carried out to evaluate antifungal activity by using different epigeic earthworm species, Eudrilus eugeniae,
Eiseina fetida, Perionyx excavates and standard drug Itraconazole as positive control against Candida albicans, The agar well diffusion method
was used for antifungal assay maintained at 37 °C for 24 hrs. The results of the present study revealed that antifungal activity i.e. Zone of Inhibition
was more in Eudrilus eugeniae (EE) followed by Perionyx exacavatus (PE) but no antifungal activity was observed in Eisenia fetida (EF). Again
zone of inhibition in EE was comparatively more (15.33±0.33) at 10μg/ml concentration than that of 20μg/ml (10.33±0.33) and 30µg/ml
(10.66±0.33) respectively, whereas antifungal activity was only seen in 30 µg/ml (11.33±0.33) in PE. Further, antifungal activities of EE & PE
were comparatively less than that of standard drug (Itraconazole) as positive control at 5µg/ml in the present study. Based on the results, it can be
concluded that the samples of EE showed much higher antifungal activity as compared to with other two species PE & EF. The present study also
suggests that the biomolecules or bioactive compounds present in particular earthworm tissue are going to inuence against various pathogenic
microorganisms, such earthworms can be useful in further purication of biomolecules that can be used for new drug discovery in pharmaceutical
applications.
Subject
Insect Science,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry,General Physics and Astronomy,General Chemical Engineering,General Physics and Astronomy,General Mathematics,Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes,General Physics and Astronomy,Mechanical Engineering,General Materials Science,Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes,General Physics and Astronomy,Mechanical Engineering,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry,General Physics and Astronomy,General Chemical Engineering,Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes,Mechanical Engineering,Condensed Matter Physics,Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience,Developmental Neuroscience,Neurology,General Medicine,Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
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