CULTURE METHODS VERSUS FLOW CYTOMETRY FOR THE COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF EUGENIA CARYOPHYLLATA THUNB. (MYRTACEAE) ESSENTIAL OIL

Opportunistic yeasts especially belonging to Candida sp. have been recognized lately as major fungal pathogens. Treatment of fungal infections, particularly nosocomial ones, has lagged behind bacterial chemotherapy and there are substantially fewer antifungal than antibacterial drugs due to the toxic side effects (fungi being eukaryotic cells similar in structure with the host cells) and to limited solutions for the development of new classes of antifungal agents. On the other hand, the lack of standardization and laborious available techniques led to an increasing interest for developing new rapid techniques for assessing the antifungal activity of different compounds. Our aim was to optimize a flow cytometry based method to test the antifungal susceptibility to essential oils, counting as a rapid method able to indications about presumptive action mechanism of essential oil from Eugenia caryophyllata dried buds (cloves).