European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

IN VITRO CLUMPING OF FOOD POISONING STRAINS OF SALMONELLA BY EXTRACT OF BAPTISIA TINCTORIA (BAPTISIA ?)

Niharika Shaw, Supriya Singh and Satadal Das*

ABSTRACT

Baptisia tinctoria extract is a well known medicine which is used for the treatment of typhoid fever in ultra diluted form in homeopathic practice under alternative medicine. However, there is no study about its direct action on Salmonella. In the study, we made experiments to see whether Baptisia tinctoria extract as a homeopathic medicine prepared according to Government approved Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia (Baptisia Ѳ), 10g per dL) can react with food poisoning strains of genus Salmonella. In this experiment, we have used four food poisoning strains of Salmonella namely S. Enteritidis (antigenic formula I 9,12:g,m:-), S. Orion (antigenic formula I 3,15:y:1,5), S. Istanbul (antigenic formula I 8:z10:e,n,x), S. Kentucky(antigenic formula I 8:i:z6) ; a saline suspension of each bacteria was challenged with the Baptisia extract in vitro. It was found that Baptisia can induce a prominent clumping reaction in all the tested Salmonella strains. Similarly another control experiment was done with Ipecacuanha extract (Ipecacuanha Ѳ) and Arsenicum album instead of Baptisia in the experiment, which showed no clumping with Salmonella spp. The exact mechanism is still unknown, but it appears to be due to specific arabinogalactan proteins of the plant creating an antigen antibody mimicry with the bacteria which may be responsible for this reactions.

Keywords: Baptisia, Non typhoidal Salmonella, Clumping reaction.