In vivo Antimalarial and GC-MS Studies of Pennisetum purpureum Leaf Extract and Fractions
doi.org/10.26538/tjnpr/v6i8.19
Keywords:
Antimalaria models,, GC-MS analysis,, Malaria,, Pennisetum purpureum,, Plasmodium berghei.Abstract
Pennisetum purpureum (elephant grass) is a plant used in ethnomedicine for malaria treatment. The present study was aimed at investigating the antimalarial potential of P. purpureum leaf and to identify its phytoconstituents. The leaves were extracted with methanol to afford the crude extract which was successively partitioned between water and n-hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate and n-butanol to afford the fractions. The acute toxicity study was done in mice. Mice were infected with Plasmodium berghei and then treated (p.o.) with the crude extract in the curative and suppressive antimalarial models at three doses (100, 200 and 400 mg/kg). Another set of infected mice was also treated orally with 200 mg/kg of each of the fractions in a suppressive model. The reference drug used for both models was artemeter/lumefantrine (7 mg/kg A/L). The most active fraction, the n-hexane fraction, was subjected to further analysis by GC-MS. The crude extract lethal dose (LD50) was established as 1702.94 mg/kg. The crude extract showed a plasmodial inhibitory activity in the range of 46.20 to 59.90% in the curative model. Both the extract and fractions displayed chemo-suppressive activity (p<0.05) in the range of 66.90 to 96.50%. The A/L produced (p<0.05) 69.00% inhibitory and 95.20% chemo- suppressive activities. The results of GC-MS showed the presence of 21 compounds. It was concluded that the extract and fractions of P. purpureum displayed strong antimalarial activity in both models which provides justification for the use of the plant in traditional medicine for malarial treatment.
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