Abstract:

Introduction: Antimicrobial agents are essentially important in reducing the global burden of infectious diseases. However, the increase in bacterial resistance to the antimicrobial agents poses a very serious threat to public health and all kinds of antibiotics, including the major last resort drugs worldwide. This study aimed at determine the antibacterial activity of honey against S. aureus, A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa commonly causing burn wound infection to reduce overuse of antibiotics and to decrease the increase of antimicrobial resistance.

Methodology: This was laboratory based-experimental study which was conducted at the CUHAS Microbiology laboratory. Aimed to determine antibacterial activity of honey against archived samples of S. aureus, A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa originally isolated from infected burn wounds in burn unit at BMC. The antibacterial activity of commercially obtained raw honey from stinging bees was determined by well diffusion technique and the zone of inhibition was measured and recorded.

Results: Raw honey exhibited both bacteriostatic and bactericidal activity against tested organism with an overall zone mean of inhibition was 10.4(±5.2) mm. Honey inhibited Gram-negative bacteria growth more than in Gram positive bacteria (P value=0.016), and susceptibility was highest in P. aeruginosa (P value=0.001) which was statistically significant.

Conclusion: From the results obtained in this study, we can consider honey as a promising future antibacterial agent against Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii which are notorious to treat in infected burn wounds.