Palatip Chutoam, Suwit Klongthalay, and Voravuth Somsak
Continuous emergence of antimalarial drug resistant malaria parasites and their rapid spread across the globe warrant urgent search for new antimalarials. Traditional medicinal plants have been the main sources for screening active phytochemicals against malaria. Accordingly, this study was aimed at evaluating the antimalarial activity of crude leaf extract of Bauhinia strychnifolia against Plasmodium berghei infected mice. Aqueous crude leaf extract of B. strychnifolia have been prepared and tested for acute toxicity and antimalarial efficacy in P. berghei ANKA infected BALB/c mice. At three oral doses of 100, 500 and 1,000 mg/kg of extract were safe, chemosuppressive and thus prevented body weight loss, packed cell volume reduction and increased mice mean survival time in a dosedependent manner compared to the untreated control group. The maximum efficacious extract was found at the dose of 1,000 mg/kg which prolonged mean mouse survival past day 26 of infection with all the mice in this group having the highest parasitemia suppression rate (85%). This study suggests that the crude leaf extract of this plant have promising antimalarial activity against P. berghei in a dose dependent manner, which supports the folkloric use of the plant for treating malaria.
PDFShare this article
Malaria Control & Elimination received 1187 citations as per Google Scholar report
