Antibacterial potential of crude extracts from sea cucumber Holothuria fuscoscinerea Jaeger, 1833

This study was conducted to determine the antibacterial potential of the crude extracts of skin, gonad, Cuvierian tubules, Polian vesicles and intestine of the sea cucumber Holothuria fuscoscinerea collected from Rasa Island, Narra, Palawan, Philippines. The antibacterial potential of the extracts was determined against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus using filter paper disc diffusion method with Tetracycline as the positive control and distilled water as the negative control. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the results showed significant differences in the effects of the treatments when tested against S. aureus and E. coli (p<0.05). Tukey’s test further proved that Polian vesicle was significantly highest in terms of antibacterial property among other extracts but not comparable to positive control against S. aureus. On the other hand, Tukey’s test showed that Cuvierian tubules and Polian vesicles were not significantly different from each other in terms of antibacterial effect but not comparable to tetracycline when tested against E. coli. The extracts from skin, gonad and intestine did not show inhibitory effect on the test organisms. T-test showed that E. coli and S. aureus were not significantly different in terms of susceptibility towards the treatments. Based on the results, extracts from Cuvierian tubules and Polian vesicles of H. fuscoscinerea are potential sources of antibacterial compounds.