Abstract
BackgroundIn this study, we selected two medicinal plants Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr. and Artemisia nilagirica (C.B. Clarke) Pamp. on the basis of their traditional use in the treatment of fever associated with malaria in Assam (India) and evaluated their antimalarial potential against Plasmodium falciparum strains.MethodsThe properly processed plant parts of C. maxima (Burm.) Merr. and A. nilagirica (C.B. Clarke) Pamp. were extracted with different solvents from nonpolar to polar by cold maceration technique. After that antimalarial activities of the extracts were evaluated against both chloroquine sensitive (3D7) and resistant (RKL-9) strains of P. falciparum using Giemsa staining light microscopy technique. The most active extract(s) was further screened for cytotoxicity potential against murine macrophage RAW264.7 cell line using MTT assay. Then preliminary phytochemical screening and qualitative fingerprint analysis of the active extract(s) were done to check the presence of different secondary metabolites.ResultsFrom the in vitro study, the hydro-alcoholic extract of C. maxima (Burm.) Merr. and methanol extract of A. nilagirica (C.B. Clarke) Pamp. were found to be the most active against both 3D7 and RKL-9 strains. In the cytotoxicity study, the CC50 values of the active extracts were found to be > 100 μg/ml, which suggested the safety of the extracts. Then phytochemical and fingerprint analysis revealed the presence of various important plant secondary metabolites in both the extracts.ConclusionThe findings of this study confirmed the presence of antimalarial potential of hydro-alcoholic extract of C. maxima (Burm.) Merr. and methanol extract of A. nilagirica (C.B. Clarke) Pamp without having any toxic effect. Both the extracts showed IC50 values below 5 μg/ml against 3D7 and RKL-9 strains.
Highlights
In this study, we selected two medicinal plants Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr. and Artemisia nilagirica
After completing the extraction process, the highest yield was obtained in hydro-alcoholic solvent system for C. maxima whereas highest yield was obtained in methanol solvent for A. nilagirica
In vitro antimalarial activity The slides prepared from each well were observed under the light microscope and the number of infected erythrocytes were counted within a particular area
Summary
We selected two medicinal plants Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr. and Artemisia nilagirica We selected two medicinal plants Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr. On the basis of their traditional use in the treatment of fever associated with malaria in Assam (India) and evaluated their antimalarial potential against Plasmodium falciparum strains. The antimalarial drugs, quinine and artemisinin were isolated from the plant sources based on the information of traditional use [3]. Besides Panda et al evaluated the antimalarial potency of the different extracts of Artemisia nilagirica (C.B. Clarke) against an African strain (FCR-3) of P. falciparum using in vitro technique and found IC50 value 5.76 ± 0.82 μg/ml of the methanol extract [29]. Based on the previous reports and their use in traditional medicine, it was hypothesized to have active phytoconstituent(s) against the resistant strains of malaria parasites. In this study, we investigated the antimalarial potency of different extracts of C. maxima and A. nilagirica against chloroquine sensitive (3D7) and chloroquine resistant (RKL-9) strains of P. falciparum
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