Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2013, Article ID 525613, 17 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/525613 Research Article Evaluation of Aromatic Plants and Compounds Used to Fight Multidrug Resistant Infections Ramar Perumal Samy, 1 Jayapal Manikandan, 2,3 and Mohammed Al Qahtani 2 1 Infectious Diseases Programme, MD4, 5 Science Drive 2, Department of Microbiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University Health System (NUHS), National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597 2 Center of Excellence in Genomic Medicine Research, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80216, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia 3 School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, Te University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Ramar Perumal Samy; rperumalsamy@yahoo.co.uk and Mohammed Al Qahtani; mhalqahtani@kau.edu.sa Received 29 November 2012; Revised 7 May 2013; Accepted 23 May 2013 Academic Editor: Rong Zeng Copyright © 2013 Ramar Perumal Samy et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Traditional medicine plays a vital role for primary health care in India, where it is widely practiced to treat various ailments. Among those obtained from the healers, 78 medicinal plants were scientifcally evaluated for antibacterial activity. Methanol extract of plants (100 g of residue) was tested against the multidrug resistant (MDR) Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Forty- seven plants showed strong activity against Burkholderia pseudomallei (strain TES and KHW) and Staphylococcus aureus, of which Tragia involucrata L., Citrus acida Roxb. Hook.f., and Aegle marmelos (L.) Correa ex Roxb. showed powerful inhibition of bacteria. Eighteen plants displayed only a moderate efect, while six plants failed to provide any evidence of inhibition against the tested bacteria. Purifed compounds showed higher antimicrobial activity than crude extracts. Te compounds showed less toxic efect to the human skin fbroblasts (HEPK) cells than their corresponding aromatic fractions. Phytochemical screening indicates that the presence of various secondary metabolites may be responsible for this activity. Most of the plant extracts contained high levels of phenolic or polyphenolic compounds and exhibited activity against MDR pathogens. In conclusion, plants are promising agents that deserve further exploration. Lead molecules available from such extracts may serve as potential antimicrobial agents for future drug development to combat diseases caused by the MDR bacterial strains as reported in this study. 1. Introduction Treatment of infections is compromised worldwide by the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics [1]. New and emerging drug resistance bacteria strains, par- ticularly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), and multidrug resistance (MDR) Gram- negative bacteria, are increasing worldwide and add to the gravity of the situation [2]. S. aureus cause a variety of syndromes such as food poisoning, toxic shock syndrome, skin lesions [3], hyperproliferative skin disease [4], and atopic dermatitis [5, 6]. Community-acquired pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumonia, and S. aureus accounts for signifcant mortality in Southeast Asia [7]. Melioidosis has been recognized as an important human infection caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei in Singapore, Malaysia, Tailand, and Northern Australia [8, 9]. Cases have also been reported from some other tropical and subtropical regions like Africa and America, and a number of cases in man has recently been reported to increase in China, Taiwan, and South India [10, 11]. Infection with antibiotic resistant bacteria negatively impacts on public health, due to an increased incidence of treatment failure and severity of diseases. Development of resistant bacteria due to the chromosomal mutations is more commonly associated with the horizontal transfer of resistance determinants borne on mobile genetic elements [12]. B. pseudomallei is intrinsically