Study on efficacy of using traditional drugs produced from herbal plants: Caesalpinia sappan L., Rhodomyrtus tomentosa and Psidium guyjava L. in prevention and treatment of pig diarrhea

Abstract

Our study was carried out to evaluate the efficacy of using Vietnamese traditional herb medicines, including Caesalpinia sappan L., Rhodomyrtus tomentosa and Psidium guyjava L. in prevention and treatment of the diarrheal diseases in pigs. Firstly, we tested the antibacterial effects of these plant extract materials on Escherichia coli isolated from feces of the diarrheal
pigs. The studied results showed that ethanol was the optimal solvent to extract the phytoncide components of these plants, creating the extracted materials having the effect to inhibit bacteria. In addition, we observed that among three investigated plants, Caesalpinia sappan L. had given
the best antibacterial effect. We then processed these plant extract components into the form of traditional round tablets so as to test the efficacy of this herb medicine in vivo experiments with the diarrheal pigs. The experimental results showed that the combinations of three plant
extracts, with a ratio of 50% Caesalpinia sappan L., 25% Rhodomyrtus tomentosa and 25% Psidium guyjava L. exerted the highest effect on both diarrheal prevention and treatment. wever, the herbal product effect was still lower than that of antibiotics. Therefore, we suggest that it is necessary to study farther on extraction and pharmaceutical processing technologies
for the herbal plants so as to verify suitable methods that can increase the therapeutic effects of these herbs. By doing that, we can reduce the main disadvantage and expand the use of the herbal medicines in animal husbandry and veterinary, towards the use of herbal medicines to replace antibiotics in prevention and treatment of the bacteria infection diseases.