Medicinal Plant Extracts Enhance Conventional Antibiotic Activity against Helicobacter pylori: An In Vitro Assessment

In Nigeria, the proliferation of resistance strains associated with H. pylori has complicated treatment regimens, combination therapies, including natural products, may offer a promising approach to enhance treatment efficacy. This study x-rayed the effect of conventional antibiotics on H. pylori which was exposed to some selected medicinal extracts. A total of 186 stool and blood samples were collected and screened for HP using Columbia agar supplemented with minor nutrients. The isolates were characterized using their morphological, biochemical and molecular properties. The phytochemical constituents of Zingiber officinale (ZO) rhizome, Hunteria umbellate (HU) leaves and Neubouda laevis (NL) leaf extracts were determined using gravimetric and spectrophotometric methods. The in vitro activities of medicinal plants against the isolates were carried out using the Agar-welled diffusion method. Exposure of the resistance strains to different concentrations of the best mixture of extracts (HU+NL+ZO) was carried out using the tube dilution technique. The disk technique was used to examine the susceptibility of the exposed strains to conventional antibiotics. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and student “t” test were used to analyze the data generated from the study at a 95 % confidence level. H. pylori strain K154 (HPK154), H. pylori strain BS07 (HPBS07), H. pylori strain K93 (HPK93) and H. pylori strain K115 (HPK115) were mostly encountered in the study. Alkaloids, saponins, phenolics, flavonoids, tannins, and glycosides were the major phytochemicals significantly (P<0.05) detected in the plant extracts. ZO, HU and NL extracts significantly (P<0.05) reduced the number of resistance strains from 36.82 % to 0.14 %, and NL+HU+ZO recorded the highest activity. Therefore, exposing HPK154, HPBS07, HPK93 and HPK115 to the studied medicinal plant extracts at their optimal level, reduced the level of resistance associated with the organism, and NL+HU+ZO was proven to be the greatest enhancer.