Evaluation of Anti-Plasmodial Effect of Azadrachta Indica in Plasmodium Berghi-Infected Mice

Abstract

The emergence and spread of strains of P.falciparium to most of all available antimalarial drugs constitute major problem to control of malaria. Thus there is need to search for novel, cheap, effective and safe antimalarial drugs. This study was designed to evaluate the antimalarial activities of both the leaf and the bark of Azadrachta indica. A hundred apparentelly healthy albino mice (27-30g comprising of both test and control groups) were infected intraperitoneally with Plasmodium berghei. Acute and sub-acute toxicity studies of the extracts were carried out by giving up to 800mg/kg to apparentelly healthy non-infected mice. Weight loss, change in general behaviour and mortality were used as indicators of toxicity. Doses of 200, 600 and 800mg/kg/day of each extract of the leaf, the bark and their combination were given orally to infected mice after three hours.Following the four-day suppressive test procedure, none of the extracts caused symptoms of toxicity at the given doses within 24hours. Each extract showed variable level of parasitaemia suppression depending on the dose. The crude aqeous extract of A.indica leaf exerted 70% suppression at the dose of 800mg/kg. The crude aqeous extract of the bark and the leaf of A.indica swed the highest (79.68%) suppression of parasitaemia at the dose of 800mg/kg. Furthermore, the crude aqeous extract of the bark of A.indica induced 66.32% suppression, whereas 25mg/kg of chloroquine exerted 94.65% suppression of parasitaemia. The study showed that crude aqeous extracts of Azadrachta indicacaused strong clearance against P.berghei indicating that they contain some chemical constituents that possibly lead to antimalarial drug development.