Acute Toxicity Effect of Artemisia Afra Plant Extracts on the Liver, Kidney, Spleen and in Vivo Antimalarial Assay on Swiss Albino Mice

Abstract

Artemisia afra (Jacq. Ex. Wild), or "African Wormwood" belonging to the family of Astereaces and is widely used traditionally for health care in the eastern part of Africa with few research evidence substantiating its safety. The aim of this study was to investigate the safety of the ethanolic, dichloromethane, and hexanolic extracts of Artemisia afra by determining its pharmaco-toxicological effects after an acute oral administration in mice and to test also their in vivo antimalarial effects. Oral acute doses of Artemisia afra extracts were given to thirty mice at the doses of 1000, 2000 and 2500 mg/kg of body weight. The mice were then observed for fourteen days, toxicity signs, body weight, organs weight and biochemical parameters were checked. Four days peter’s test was run on mice to determine the in vivo antimalarial activity of the plant extracts and the IC50 for each extract was determined. The results show few toxicity signs from the first two days after oral administration. There were no differences in organs weight and body weight for the experimental mice when compared to the control group. The level of alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) were found do not be statistically different from the control. The LD 50 of the extracts was found to be greater than 2500 mg/kg of body weight. The results also showed a high antimalarial effect of the extracts when tested in vivo using Plasmodium Berghei Anka. In Conclusion Artemisia afra is a strong drug candidate for malaria with no toxic effects in high dosage.