Antimalarial Assessment of Indigofera tinctoria Methanol Leaf Extract in Parasitized Albino Rats

Abstract

This study was undertaken to investigate the antimalarial activity of Indigofera tinctoria in Plasmodium berghei-infected rats. Phytochemical investigation was conducted using standard method to determine the presence of the bioactive compounds. The in vitro anti-malarial assay of Indigofera tinctoria was carried out in triplicates in 96 wells microliter plate. The in-vivo anti-malarial effect was assessed with group serving as the normal control, group two was left untreated, group three was treated with the standard drug wile group four, five and six were treated with 100mg/kg, 200mg/kg and 400mg/kg respectively. Indigofera tinctoria revealed the presence of saponins, tannins, flavonoids, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, steroids and quinines. For in vitro studies, the drug treated group had the lowest parasite count with a percentage protection of 93.65% while the percentage protection of the group that received the highest dose of the extract had a percentage protection of 79.50%. At Day 3, the untreated group still had its parasite count significantly higher than that of the other groups, while the lowest percentage count was recorded in the drug treated group. For the in vivo studies, the parasite count of the group that received the highest dose of the extract was not significantly different from that of the group treated with the standard drug. The percentage inhibition of the drug control at Day 3 was 93.82 while that of the group that received the highest dose of the extract was 80.06%. The parasite count before treatment (Day 0) for the normal control was significantly different (P<0.05) from that of the other groups. At Day 1, the parasite count for the induced control was significantly (P<0.05) higher than that of the other groups. There was no significant difference (P>0.05) between the groups treated with the extract. At Day 6, the percentage inhibition for the drug control was 87.58%, while that of the extract treated groups were 39.98%, 57.86% and 76.48% respectively. At Day 9, there was not significantly difference between the normal control, the drug control and the group treated with the highest group of the extract. The potent antimalarial activity observed could be attributed to the presence of the secondary metabolites in Indigofera tinctoria leaves extracts.