Mohammad Mehdi Attarpour Yazdi - Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

Introduction & Aims: Acinetobacter is an important pathogen and produce burn wound infections. Increasing of antibiotic usage for Acinetobacter infections, created antibiotic resistance and subsequently to produce new antibiotics. Medical herbs with anti microbial activity have always been important role in traditional medicine. The aims of this study was to determine the antibacterial activity of ethanolic extract of Curcuma amada rhizome against Acinetobacter isolated from burn wound infections and to compare with effects of selected antibiotics in vitro.Methods: This research is a descriptive analytic study. First, a sample of ethanolic extract of the plant rhizome was prepared by maceration method. Then its antibacterial activity against 93 isolates of Acinetobacter from 300 samples of different infection was evaluated by well diffusion and then agar serial dilution method. Also, the MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) of extract was determined. The effect of selected antibiotics was tested by disk diffusion method.Results: The frequency distribution tables, diagrams, Kay square, and T test were used to describe and analyze the data. The results demonstrated that the Curcuma amada rhizome ethanolic extract had been effected against 54 of Acinetobacter isolated(58%).The MIC of the extract for this bacteria was 15.50 mg/ml, while they were often resistant to selected antibiotics(91.2% resistant to Imipenem and Amikacin).There was significant difference between the effects of plant and antibiotics on Acinetobacter (P<0.05)Discussion & Conclusions: This study demonstrates that an ethanolic extract of Curcuma amada is effective on Acinetobacter isolated from burn wound infection and its effect is even better than that of selective antibiotics. Further investigations will be necessary.