Abstract
Leishmaniasis is a major worldwide public health problem with about two to three million humans threatened by this disease annually. Allium cepa (onion) is an important dietary vegetable and was used as a herbal medicine for centuries. The root of Ixora brachiata is medicinally important. The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-Leishmania effect of the ethanolic and methanolic extracts of Ixora brachiata root and aqueous onion extracts on Leishmania major promastigotes. The parasites isolated from cutaneous leishmaniasis were exposed with different concentrations of selected plant extracts and their inhibitory effects on the promastigotes were evaluated after 24 and 48 hours. Among tested plant extracts, Ixora brachiata root extracts revealed the best activity against Leishmania major promastigotes with IC100 value of 2.5 mg/mL and IC50 value of 0.078 mg/mL. This study showed that aqueous Allium cepa and Ixora brachiata root extracts as natural products could be used as alternative drugs in treatment of leishmaniasis.
Highlights
Leishmaniasis is a major worldwide public health problem with about two to three million humans threatened by this disease annually
According to the mentioned reports above, the L. major promastigotes inhibited by the ethanolic and methanolic extracts of I. brachiata root had low viability (20%) while the L. major promastigotes inhibited with aqueous A. cepa extracts had high viability (80%)
The IC100 values of tested plant extracts were 2.5-5.0 mg/ mL, which were comparable to the IC100 of 85 mg/mL glucantime
Summary
Allium cepa (onion), belongs to family Gallium, is rich in sulfur. It has been traditionally used as carminative, diuretic, expectorant, stomachic as well as antispasmodic, anthelmintic, and anti-infective factor [1]. Due to side effects of commercial drugs for treatment of these diseases, it is necessary to find effective medicinal plants, available, and cheap drugs for prevention of the Leishmania growth. We evaluated the antileishmanial effect of aqueous onion and I. brachiata extracts on the Leishmania promastigotes. Antileishmanial activity of many plant extracts were reported in previous studies [5,6,7,8]. Literature on I. brachiata root extract has shown good antidermatophytic activity [9], the effect of this plant has not been reported on Leishmania parasites up to this date. Previous studies showed that all tested strains of Leishmania were sensitive to the onion juice [10]
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