الفهرس 
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Abstract
Neonatal infections are considered as the first cause of newborn mortality; more than 10 million neonates die before the age of five according to the world health organization (WHO) reports (WHO. 2005). In this study 44 samples were collected from Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). 77.2% were recovered from female patients and 22.7% from males. Samples were collected from different sources such as blood, urine, CSF, eye discharges etc. 36.4% of the samples were recovered from blood. It was observed that Acinetobacter baumanni and Klebsiella pneumoniae were the most common pathogens in the clinical samples of blood (25 and 37.5%, respectively).
Antibiotic susceptibility test showed that all the isolates were multidrug resistant (MDR) with variable percentages of resistance. Stenotrophomonas maltophilia exhibited resistance to 90% of the tested antibiotics. Providencia stuartii showed resistance to 86.7% of the tested antibiotics, Sphingomonas paucimobilis was resistant to 73.3% while Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates showed resistance from 50 to 73.3% for the tested antibiotics. Escherichia coli showed resistance to 46.6- 66.6% of the tested antibiotics
Most of the tested bacterial isolates showed resistance to β-lactam antibiotics (ESBL) group except for Proteus mirabilis (Pr.m.21), E. coli (Es.c.9) and K. pneumoniae (Kl.p.17). Almost all the tested isolates in this study showed complete resistance to cephalothin with MIC (>16µg/ml).
Genotypic study of the isolates revealed high distribution for Int I and Int III (51.7 and 48.3%, respectively), while only 31% harbored Int II.
ESBL genes of class A were screened and blaTEM gene was predominant (75.8%) while the occurrence of blaCTX-M and blaSHV genes were recorded in 44.8% and 20.6% of the isolates, respectively.
Different solvent extracts of Nigella sativa seeds, Saussurea lappa roots and Cassia. angustifolia leaves were investigated for their antimicrobial activity against bacterial isolates. The methanolic extract of the 3 plants demonstrated the highest antibacterial activity against all tested bacteria.
Saussurea lappa extract showed the highest antibacterial activity followed by Cassia angustifolia leaves. They showed activity against Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (the most virulent isolate in this study) at low concentration (1.25, 2.5 mg/ml, respectively), while, Nigella Sativa seeds extract was the least active extract.
The methanolic extract of Saussurea lappa showed more antimicrobial activity especially against Sphingomonas sp and Serratia sp.
The chemical composition of the plant extracts were examined; they contained phenols, tannins and flavenoids. The emergence of antibiotic resistance and the high risk of the abuse of antibiotics, highlight the need of using alternative agents that have low risk and costless.