Potential Anti-acne: Bawang Dayak (Eleutherine bulbosa (Mill.) Urb.) from Central Kalimantan-Indonesia

Background: Research development has been carried out by exploring antimicrobial agents from herbal sources that can be further developed as anti-acne drugs. Some previous studies reported that bawang dayak has antibacterial properties. However, the study of bawang dayak as anti-acne in Indonesia was limited so that it becomes one of the reasons why this study should be developed. Objective: This study was aimed to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of bawang dayak ethanol extract and to determine the antibacterial activity of the chloroform fraction and the ethyl acetate fraction of bawang dayak extract. Methods: The MIC value was determinate by measured initial absorbance and final absorbance of ten variations of concentration of extract using a UV-Vis spectrophotometer. The antibacterial activity of chloroform and ethyl acetate fraction was performed using the disc diffusion technique, with five variations of concentration against P.acnes, S. epidermidis, S. aureus. Results: The decrease in absorbance value occurred at a concentration of 0.19%, 1.56% to 100%, which means that at that concentration can inhibit bacterial growth. The antibacterial activity showed that both the chloroform fraction and ethyl acetate fraction of bawang dayak extract were active against all the tested bacteria, whose inhibition zones were in the range of 5.8 ± 0.9 - 23.6 ± 2.3 mm. However, the ethyl acetate fraction of bawang dayak extract showed better antibacterial activity than chloroform fraction of bawang dayak extract. Conclusion: In this study, it was found that the concentration of 0.19% is the MIC of bawang dayak extract against P. acnes. The highest antibacterial activity was produced by 20% of ethyl acetate fraction of bawang dayak extract against S. aureus.