Some southern African plant species used to treat helminth infections in ethnoveterinary medicine have excellent antifungal activities

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Vinasan Naidoo¹  Jacobus N Eloff¹  Mathew Adamu² 

[1] Phytomedicine Programme, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X04, 0110, Onderstepoort, Pretoria, South Africa;Phytomedicine Programme, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X04, 0110, Onderstepoort, Pretoria, South Africa;Permanent address: Department of Veterinary Parasitology and Entomology College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Agriculture Makurdi, Makurdi, Nigeria;

关键词: Antifungal;    Candida;    Cryptococcus;    Aspergillus;    Anthelmintic;    Therapeutic index;    Selectivity;    Plant extract;    Immune compromised patients;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-12-213

 received in 2012-07-02, accepted in 2012-10-29,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDiseases caused by microorganisms and parasites remain a major challenge globally and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa to man and livestock. Resistance to available antimicrobials and the high cost or unavailability of antimicrobials complicates matters. Many rural people use plants to treat these infections. Because some anthelmintics e.g. benzimidazoles also have good antifungal activity we examined the antifungal activity of extracts of 13 plant species used in southern Africa to treat gastrointestinal helminth infections in livestock and in man.MethodsAntifungal activity of acetone leaf extracts was determined by serial microdilution with tetrazolium violet as growth indicator against Aspergillus fumigatus, Cryptococcus neoformans and Candida albicans. These pathogens play an important role in opportunistic infections of immune compromised patients. Cytotoxicity was determined by MTT cellular assay. Therapeutic indices were calculated and selectivity for different pathogens determined. We proposed a method to calculate the relation between microbicidal and microbistatic activities. Total activities for different plant species were calculated.ResultsOn the whole, all 13 extracts had good antifungal activities with MIC values as low as 0.02 mg/mL for extracts of Clausena anisata against Aspergillus fumigatus a nd 0.04 mg/mL for extracts of Zanthoxylum capense, Clerodendrum glabrum, and Milletia grandis, against A. fumigatus. Clausena anisata extracts had the lowest cytotoxicity (LC50) of 0.17 mg/mL, a reasonable therapeutic index (2.65) against A. fumigatus. It also had selective activity against A. fumigatus, an overall fungicidal activity of 98% and a total activity of 3395 mL/g against A. fumigatus. This means that 1 g of acetone leaf extract can be diluted to 3.4 litres and it would still inhibit the growth. Clerodendrum glabrum, Zanthoxylum capense and Milletia grandis extracts also yielded promising results.ConclusionsSome plant extracts used for treatment of parasitic infections also have good antifungal activity. Because it is much easier to isolate antifungal compounds by bioassay guided fractionation, this approach may facilitate the isolation of anthelmintic compounds from active plant extracts. The viability of this approach can be tested by isolating the antifungal compounds and then determining its anthelmintic activity. Some of these plant extracts may also be useful in combating fungal infections.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Adamu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.