Abstract

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Antimalarial drug resistance is one of the factors that have contributed to malaria treatment failure especially in Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa where malaria is endemic. Globally, renewed interest in medicinal plants has focused on the herbal cures among indigenous populations. Of such medicinal plants is Terminalia catappa. The medicinal use of T. catappa in malaria treatment was investigated in vivo in this study. The fresh leaves of T. catappa were air dried for a period of four weeks and ground into powdery form. Two hundred and fifty grams of the powdered leaf was submerged in 1.3 litre of ethanol and hot water respectively for 72 hours to extract the bio active ingredients. The antiplasmodial activity of the ethanol and water extracts were studied using Plasmodium berghei infected Swiss albino mice at 100 and 200mg/kg/day dosage. The 5 day curative test assay revealed that the administered dosages (100 and 200mg/kg/day) of Terminalia catappa ethanol extract caused chemo suppression of 32.88% and 39.48% respectively on day three and chemo suppression of 54.35% and 56.75% on day five. Similar dosages of hot water leaf extract caused chemo suppression of 26.63 and 30.45% respectively on day three and chemo suppression of 30.45% and 37.60% on day five. These values were statistically significant (P˂0.05) when compared with the positive control which recorded 39.88% and 57.63% for day 3 and 5 respectively. Our finding showed that Terminalia catappa leaf contained active antiplasmodial compounds and therefore, might be useful in the formation of novel antimalarial drug.

Keywords: Chemo-suppression, antiplasmodial activity, malaria treatment,Terminalia catappa.