The University of Guyana may be close to patenting an antibacterial treatment from passion fruit based on research conducted by Professor Raymond Jagessar of the Department of Chemistry.
Dr Jagessar and his team were among the eight groups provided with a grant under the US$10 million World Bank funded University of Guyana Science and Technology Support Project in 2014.
Jagessar’s team conducted a study into the “antimicrobial activities of selected fruits and vegetables against selective pathogenic micro-organisms.”
Jagessar told Stabroek News that he was motivated to conduct research into natural treatments in light of the large number of permanent side effects caused by synthetic drugs that are widely used. “People are using synthetic drugs but these have a lot of irreversible side effects. If we could find a fruit that can perform the same jobs, it will be great; it will have little to no side effects because it is edible,” he said.
After conducting several months of in vitro (laboratory) tests, the research team was able to conclude that the commonly used passion fruit has several antimicrobial properties. In fact, this particular fruit has displayed resistance to all pathogenic microorganism it has been tested against. It, however, appears to selectively target particular microorganism. “Even a meal enriched with this fruit can combat the microorganism, just like you drink cherry juice or a lot of citrus to fight a cold,” he noted.
According to Jagessar, the research on passion fruit involved the use of the ethanol and aqueous extract in the absence and presence of additives as natural antibiotics against human pathogens E. coli, S. aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumonia, and