Title

Evaluation of novel herbal antifungal efficacy against Candida albicans isolated from oral leukoplakia

Authors

Neetu Pandey¹, Sweta Singh²*, Gopal Srivastava³, Chirag Patel⁴, Rangoli Srivastava⁵ & Sameer Gupta⁶

Affiliation

¹Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Mansarovar Dental College Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India; ²Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology and Oral Microbiology, Himachal Institute of Dental Sciences, Rampur Ghat Road Ponta Sahib, Himachal Pradesh, India; ³Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Government Dental College, Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Campus, Kerala, India; ⁴Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, Faculty of Dental Science, Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad, Gujarat, India; ⁵Department of Public Health Dentistry, Faculty of dental sciences, SGT University, Gurgaon, Haryana, India; ⁶Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, Inderprastha Dental College and Hospital, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Neetu Pandey - E-mail: drneetupandey2807@gmail.com
Sweta Singh - E-mail: shwetasinghtmdcrc@gmail.com
Gopal Srivastava - E-mail: gopalsrivastava45@gmail.com
Chirag Patel - E-mail: chiragm48@gmail.com
Rangoli Srivastava - E-mail: authrangoli@gmail.com
Sameer Gupta - E-mail: sameer.gupta83@yahoo.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received November 15, 2025; Revised December 15, 2025; Accepted December 15, 2025, Published December 15, 2025

Abstract

Candida albicans infection and growing antifungal resistance are often linked with the emergence of an oral leukoplakia, a potentially malignant lesion that necessitates the implementation of alternative treatment methods. Therefore, it is of interest to compare antifungal effectiveness of Curcuma longa, Azadirachta indica and Allium sativum extracts on oral leukoplakia lesions C. albicans. Agar diffusion, MIC, biofilm inhibition and time-kill assays were done with different concentrations of ethanolic extracts as control was nystatin. The extracts that had the highest activity in the form of largest inhibition zones, least MIC and greatest biofilm activity were A. sativum. Thus, its herbal extracts particularly have a good potential when used as adjunctive antifungal agents in management of oral leukoplakia.

Keywords

Candida albicans, oral leukoplakia, herbal extracts, antifungal activity, Allium sativum, Curcuma longa, Azadirachta indica, biofilm inhibition

Citation

Pandey et al. Bioinformation 21(12): 4901-4907 (2025)

Edited by

Hiroj Bagde

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.