Abstract

Background: Trichophyton(T.) rubrum is most common fungal pathogen that causes tinea pedis and onychomycosis. It recurrently infects human and usually persists for very long time, provoking public health concern. Due to the limitation in current treatment options, alternative therapies are desirable. We investigated the inhibitory effect of UVC, terbinafine hydrochloride 1% and paeonia natural extracts on T. rubrum in vitro.

Objective and Method: Total 25 T. rubrum strains were cultured for 10 days on Mycosel agar plate; 5 strains of T. rubrum and 5 copies for each strain. They were divided into 5 groups: control, UVC irradiation, terbinafine spray, paeonia natural extracts spray, UVC and paeonia natural extracts sprays. The cultured media were irradiated for 1 hour daily for 3 weeks in the germicidal lamp emitting 253.7 nm (UVC), power of 2.875 mW/cm2 at 10 cm distance. Terbinafine and paeonia extracts was sprayed twice on the surface to fully cover the colony area. The median diameter of each colony were measured every other day for 3 weeks. The change of colony diameter and the growth rate were analyzed.

Results: The UVC had virtually no effect on restraining the growth of T. rubrum, similar with the growth of the control group. However, both the terbinafine spray and paeonia extracts slowed down the growth rate remarkably and showed a similar effect.

Conclusion: We could only figure out the fungistatic effect, and not the fungicidal effect of paeonia extract and terbinafine hydrochloride in vitro. UVC irradiation setting in this study was totally ineffective. More studies are needed on more variable wavelength and the fluence of UVC irradiation. In addition, further verification on the mechanism and the effect of anti-fungal activity by paeonia extracts are needed.

Keywords

T. rubrum Paeonia Natural extract UVC Antifungal agent

KJMM 2014 March;19(1):1-8(8). Epub 2016 February 17
Copyright © 2014 by Korean Journal of Medical Mycology

Language

Korean/English

Author

Ho Jung Jung; Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Yang Won Lee; Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Yong Beom Choe; Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Kyu Joong Ahn; Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding

Kyu Joong Ahn, Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. Tel: +82-2-2030-5181, Fax: +82-2-2030-5179, e-mail: kjahn@kuh.ac.kr

Publication history

Received 31 December 2013; Revised 6 February 2014; Accepted 15 March 2014.

Acknowledgements

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ho Jung Jung

Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Yang Won Lee

Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Yong Beom Choe

Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Kyu Joong Ahn

Department of Dermatology, Konkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Since epub date 2016 February 17