The genus Hypericum—a valuable resource of anti-Staphylococcal leads

In the present study, extracts of 34 species and varieties of the genus Hypericum were screened for activity against a clinical isolate of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which in addition possessed a multidrug efflux mechanism conferring a high level of resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics. Thirty-three of the 34 chloroform extracts showed significant activity in a disk diffusion assay, and five extracts had minimum inhibitory concentrations of 64 μg/ml, indicating that this genus has great potential to yield compounds with potent activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria