Abstract
Background Treatment of malaria has been compromised by the emergence of drug-resistant parasites. Consequently, novel agents are urgently needed from different sources including from medicinal plants. Thus, the current study aimed at evaluating the antimalarial activity of crude extract and solvent fractions of the leaves of Bersama abyssinica (B. abyssinica) against Plasmodium berghei infection in Swiss Albino mice. Method A 4-day suppressive test was employed to evaluate the antimalarial effect of crude extract and solvent fractions against early infection. The curative and prophylactic effects of crude extract and fraction with the highest chemosuppression were further tested by Rane's test and residual infection procedure. Parasitemia, survival time, packed cell volume (PCV), body weight, and rectal temperature of mice were used as evaluation parameters. Windows SPSS version 20 was used to analyze the data and analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Tukey's post hoc test was used to compare data between groups. Results The crude extract and aqueous fraction significantly (P < 0.05 to 0.001) suppressed parasitemia followed by protection of PCV reduction resulting in prolonging the survival time but failed to protect body weight and rectal temperature reduction in all tested models. The ethyl acetate and chloroform fractions also showed significant chemosuppression and PCV protection in the 4-day suppressive test. The crude extract exhibited a chemosuppression of 49.51%, 57.94%, and 44.11% while the aqueous fraction showed suppression of 47.69%, 51.62%, and 37.07% in 4-day suppressive, curative, and prophylactic tests, respectively, at 400 mg/kg. Conclusion The crude extract and fractions showed fairly moderate antimalarial activity, and the finding supports the traditional claims and previous in vitro studies. Thus, this may call for further studies to isolate chemical entities for additional safety and efficacy tests.
Highlights
Treatment of malaria has been compromised by the emergence of drug-resistant parasites
Ethanol extract of the leaves has been reported to have moderate in vitro antiplasmodial activity (IC50 23.9 ± 5.7 μg/ml) against chloroquine-resistant FcB1/Colombia strain of P. falciparum [16] and pronounced antimalarial activity against chloroquinesensitive strain (FCA-20/Eth) (IC50 4 μg/ml) [17]. us, based on ethnobotanical use and in vitro studies mentioned above, the present study evaluated the in vivo antimalarial activity of the crude extract and solvent fractions of the leaves of B. abyssinica
Collection of Plant Materials. e leaves of B. abyssinica were collected from Tara Gedam, South Gondar Zone, Amhara National Regional State, 85 km away from Gondar city, in December 2018. e collected plant material was wrapped with plastic sheets during transportation, authentication was done by a botanist in the Biology Department, University of Gondar, and a voucher specimen was deposited in the herbarium of Department of Biology, University of Gondar, for future reference
Summary
Treatment of malaria has been compromised by the emergence of drug-resistant parasites. E crude extract and aqueous fraction significantly (P < 0.05 to 0.001) suppressed parasitemia followed by protection of PCV reduction resulting in prolonging the survival time but failed to protect body weight and rectal temperature reduction in all tested models. Malaria is the most prevalent and devastating mosquitoborne infectious disease It is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout tropical and subtropical regions of the world, where the temperature and rainfall are suitable for the development of vectors and parasites [1]. P. falciparum and P. vivax are the most dominant malaria parasites in Ethiopia and they are prevalent in all malarious areas in the Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine country accounting for 60–70% and 30–40% of malaria cases, respectively, their relative composition can be variable. P. malariae and P. ovale are rare and account for
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