Atividade antifúngica do óleo essencial Syzygium aromaticum (cravo-da-índia) em agentes causadores de onicomicoses.

Abstract

Onychomycoses are increasingly recurrent fungal infections and have become a worldwide public health problem. These infections that affect the nails of the hands and feet can compromise the patient's well-being, causing aesthetic discomfort when walking, as well as causing serious complications, especially in immunocompromised patients. The pharmacological treatments of onychomycosis are generally of high financial cost, long duration, with high risk of causing adverse reactions and not infrequently, low efficacy. About 25% of the cases, the therapy does not present a satisfactory result, necessitating the search for new compounds, since the irrational use of these drugs has created microorganisms resistant to the main antifungal agents. Thus, this work evaluated the antifungal activity of eugenol, a major component of the essential oil of the Indian clove against the main causative agents of onychomycosis, T. rubrum, Candida albicans and Candida glabrata. The determination of MIC and evaluation of antifungal activity occurred individually for each microorganism and control groups were used as a reference parameter. For the evaluation of the antifungal activity, the essential oil was added to the BDA (Potato-Dextrose-Agar) medium at approximately 45 ° C in order to obtain concentrations of 1.25; 2.5; 3.75 and 5%, where each concentration represented a treatment. Petri dishes with BDA medium, without addition of essential oil were used as controls. 5mm disks with fungal growth T. rubrum grown for 8 days were peeled to the center of the plates containing the respective concentrations of the essential oil. For the evaluation of the MIC, the essential oil was serially diluted using the microdilution technique. MIC determination was performed in 96 well microdilution plates, arranged in 12 columns (1 to 12) and 8 lines (A to H). The essential oil presented antifungal activity against all tested microorganisms.