Experiments were conducted to evaluate the in vitro antifungal activity and determine chemical composition of Origanum vulgare essential oils. Nine Candida albicans (five clinical animal isolates and four ATCC strains), and three non-albicans species were studied; broth microdilution technique (CLSI) was used. Eight samples of commercial O. vulgare were submitted to hydrodistillation (Clevenger), and essential oils obtained were analyzed by gas chromatograph. Values of minimum inhibitory

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... ration (MIC) ranged from 1.0 to 0.065%, the average of MIC 50 was 0.62 µL/mL while the average of MIC 90 was 5.52 µL/mL and essential oils EO1 and EO8 were the ones with the best results. Results of thymol/carvacrol ratio were, for essential oils (EO) (EO1, 10.20/12.67; EO2, 7.88/0.50; EO3, 6.18/0.71; EO4, 0.58/21.58; EO5, 20.62/1.34; EO6, 21.95/4.71; EO7, 16.68/0.77; EO8, 8.42/9.44), demonstrated that differences between concentrations of thymol and carvacrol influenced MIC. These results indicate that the O. vulgare essential oils evaluated in this study presented growth inhibition activity over Candida spp.