Comparative Analysis of the Antifungal Efficacy of Tomato Leaves (Lycopersicum esculatum Mill) at Concentrations of 25% and 70% on the Growth of Candida albicans

Introduction. Candida albicans commonly causes oral thrush, an opportunistic illness that affects the mouth. Both topical and systemic antifungal medications effectively treat oral thrush. The study compared tomato leaf (Lycopersicum esculatum Mill) antifungal effects on Candida albicans growth at two different concentrations: 25% and 70%. Methods. This research utilizes laboratory trials employing post-test-only control groups. The Microbiology Laboratory Universitas Sumatera Utara supplied the investigation with a pure culture isolate of Candida albicans. To figure out the sample size, we used the Federer formula six times, once for each group of tomato leaves at 25% and 70% concentrations and once for the nystatin (positive control) and DMSO (negative control) groups. Use of a digital caliper for measuring the resistance diameter. We used the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis test to look at the data. Result. Tomato leaves at 25% and 70% concentrations successfully limit Candida albicans development, according to the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. The efficiency of tomato leaves at 25% and 70% concentrations in inhibiting the development of Candida albicans was shown by mean inhibitory diameters of 7.73 ± 0.366 mm and 10.21 ± 0.948 mm, respectively. Nystatin, the positive control, had an average inhibitory diameter of 25.77 ± 0.505 mm, whereas DMSO solvent, the negative control, showed no inhibition at all. Between the groups, there was a significantly different inhibitory diameter of Candida albicans growth, as shown by the Kruskal-Wallis test (p=0.000; p?0.05). At doses ranging from 25% to 75%, the Mann-Whitney test showed that there was a significant difference (p?0.05) in the effectiveness of tomato leaf extracts in inhibiting the development of Candida albicans compared to the negative control group. Conclusion. Tomato leaves inhibit the development of Candida albicans. The antifungal efficacy of tomato leaves is higher at a concentration of 70% compared to 25%.