Résumé:
Artemisia herba-alba Asso is a medicinal plant used widely in Algerian folk medicine for the treatment of several diseases. The present
work is aimed to elucidate the chemical composition of essential oil (EO) of Artemisia herba-alba. The in vitro antibacterial activity
against 11 bacterial strains, and the in vivo acute toxicity and anti-inflammatory activity were evaluated. In this study fifty-four
compounds accounting for 94.1% of total oil were identified by GC-FID and GC-MS analysis of the essential oil obtained from leaves.
α-thujone (48.0%), β-thujone (13.4%), and camphor (13.1%) are found to be the major compounds. The results of the antibacterial
activity using disc diffusion method revealed inhibition zones ranging from 10.00±0.0 to 36.00±0.9mm. Gram-positive was more
sensitive to EO compared with Gram-negative bacteria. EO exhibited minimum inhibitory concentrations and bactericidal
concentrations of 2.5 mg/ml to 10 mg/ml, and 5 mg/ml to 10 mg/ml respectively. The oil was moderately toxic and belongs to
category 4 according to GHS, mortality was achieved at the dose of 2000 mg/kg. EO of A. herba-alba reduced significantly the edema
induced by carrageenan in rat paw at 44.07% and 44.37% (after five hours) at the doses of 50 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg respectively.
