Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious health problem in many regions of the world, and the development of resistance to antibiotics by this microbe created the need for new drugs to replace those which have lost effectiveness. This study assesses the medicinal anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosis properties of natural products obtained from plants collected from Eastern Libya. In this study aqueous extracts of nine different plants were assayed for their Mycobacterium tuberculosis inhibitory activity using the BACTEC MGIT960 susceptibility test method. The aqueous extracts of Ceratonia siliqua L, Helichrysum stoechas (L.) Moench and Thymus algeriensis did not show any activity against M. tuberculosis in different concentrations. The aqueous extract of Marrubium vulgare L. from Syria showed high activity against M. tuberculosis. Marrubium alysson L., Marrubium vulgare L., Pistacia lentiscus L, Quercus coccifera L, Thymus capitatus (L.) Hoffm. & Link, showed varying degrees of activity against M. tuberculosis. The results of this study show that aqueous extracts from six different medicinal plants have different effects against M. tuberculosis in vitro.

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Article InfoThe control of indoor air quality plays an important role in the prevention of cross infection in hospitals to protect both hospital staff and patients. This study was carried out to determine the variation in microbiota of medical laboratory at Benghazi center infectious diseases and immunity. Samples were collected by using the settled plate techniques for the enumeration of bacterial and fungal isolates. The air specimens were collected through four seasons in the morning between the hours of 9 am and 11 am from air indoor medical lab and swab samples collected from the filters of the air conditioning units in autumn, spring and summer seasons. Indoor air gram positive bacteria, accounting (99.72%) was significantly higher than that of gram negative bacteria (0.28%). The most common bacteria genus found in all seasons were Staphylococcus (46.62%) Micrococcus (27.31%), followed by Kocuria (13.42% ). The most abundant isolated bacteria in the three seasons was Bacillus circulans while Penicillium sp. was the most abundant fungi in air conditioning isolates. In indoor air samples of medical laboratory rooms showed contamination with bacteria and fungi under the acceptable levels, when compared with cited in this study. Indoor airborne bacteria and fungi concentration were depended on place of isolation and seasons.