Abstract

Artemisia persica belongs to the family of Asteraceae. The genus Artemisia is approximately 400 species. Many species and varieties of this plant grow wild or are cultivated in many parts of Asia and Europe. This perennial herb, which is distributed in different regions of Iran and China, has been of great interest to Iranian and Chinese folk medicine. The objectives of this study were to investigate the antimicrobial activity of the subfraction of the methanol extract from A persica. The antimicrobial activity was determined by using agar well diffusion and micro broth dilution methods on Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus Gram-positive bacterial infection in paediatrics. The non-polar subfraction of this plant showed good antibacterial activity against S aureus. The maximal inhibition zones and MIC values for S aureus, which were sensitive to the non-polar extracts of A persica were 16 mm and 12.5 μg/ml, and 14 mm and 6.25 mg/ml, respectively.