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Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem

BACKGROUND: Ternimalia brownii Fresen (Combretaceae) is widely used in traditional medicine to treat bacterial, fungal and viral infections. There is a need to evaluate extracts of this plant in order to provide scientific proof for it's wide application in traditional medicine system. METHODS:...

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Autores principales: Mbwambo, Zakaria H, Moshi, Mainen J, Masimba, Pax J, Kapingu, Modest C, Nondo, Ramadhani SO
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851717/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17394672
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-7-9
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author Mbwambo, Zakaria H
Moshi, Mainen J
Masimba, Pax J
Kapingu, Modest C
Nondo, Ramadhani SO
author_facet Mbwambo, Zakaria H
Moshi, Mainen J
Masimba, Pax J
Kapingu, Modest C
Nondo, Ramadhani SO
author_sort Mbwambo, Zakaria H
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Ternimalia brownii Fresen (Combretaceae) is widely used in traditional medicine to treat bacterial, fungal and viral infections. There is a need to evaluate extracts of this plant in order to provide scientific proof for it's wide application in traditional medicine system. METHODS: Extraction of stem bark, wood and whole roots of T. brownii using solvents of increasing polarity, namely, Pet ether, dichloromethane, dichloromethane: methanol (1:1), methanol and aqua, respectively, afforded dry extracts. The extracts were tested for antifungal and antibacterial activity and for brine shrimp toxicity test. RESULTS: Extracts of the stem bark, wood and whole roots of T. brownii exhibited antibacterial activity against standard strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella typhi, and Bacillus anthracis and the fungi, Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. Aqueous extracts exhibited the strongest activity against both bacteria and fungi. Extracts of the roots and stem bark exhibited relatively mild cytotoxic activity against brine shrimp larvae with LC(50 )values ranging from 113.75–4356.76 and 36.12–1458.81 μg/ml, respectively. The stem wood extracts exhibited the highest toxicity against the shrimps (LC(50 )values 2.58–14.88 μg/ml), while that of cyclophosphamide, a standard anticancer drug, was 16.33 (10.60–25.15) μg/ml. CONCLUSION: These test results support traditional medicinal use of, especially, aqueous extracts for the treatment of conditions such as diarrhea, and gonorrhea. The brine shrimp results depict the general trend among plants of the genus Terminalia, which are known to contain cytotoxic compounds such as hydrolysable tannins. These results warrant follow-up through bioassay-directed isolation of the active principles.
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spelling pubmed-18517172007-04-12 Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem Mbwambo, Zakaria H Moshi, Mainen J Masimba, Pax J Kapingu, Modest C Nondo, Ramadhani SO BMC Complement Altern Med Research Article BACKGROUND: Ternimalia brownii Fresen (Combretaceae) is widely used in traditional medicine to treat bacterial, fungal and viral infections. There is a need to evaluate extracts of this plant in order to provide scientific proof for it's wide application in traditional medicine system. METHODS: Extraction of stem bark, wood and whole roots of T. brownii using solvents of increasing polarity, namely, Pet ether, dichloromethane, dichloromethane: methanol (1:1), methanol and aqua, respectively, afforded dry extracts. The extracts were tested for antifungal and antibacterial activity and for brine shrimp toxicity test. RESULTS: Extracts of the stem bark, wood and whole roots of T. brownii exhibited antibacterial activity against standard strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella typhi, and Bacillus anthracis and the fungi, Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. Aqueous extracts exhibited the strongest activity against both bacteria and fungi. Extracts of the roots and stem bark exhibited relatively mild cytotoxic activity against brine shrimp larvae with LC(50 )values ranging from 113.75–4356.76 and 36.12–1458.81 μg/ml, respectively. The stem wood extracts exhibited the highest toxicity against the shrimps (LC(50 )values 2.58–14.88 μg/ml), while that of cyclophosphamide, a standard anticancer drug, was 16.33 (10.60–25.15) μg/ml. CONCLUSION: These test results support traditional medicinal use of, especially, aqueous extracts for the treatment of conditions such as diarrhea, and gonorrhea. The brine shrimp results depict the general trend among plants of the genus Terminalia, which are known to contain cytotoxic compounds such as hydrolysable tannins. These results warrant follow-up through bioassay-directed isolation of the active principles. BioMed Central 2007-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC1851717/ /pubmed/17394672 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-7-9 Text en Copyright © 2007 Mbwambo et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 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.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mbwambo, Zakaria H
Moshi, Mainen J
Masimba, Pax J
Kapingu, Modest C
Nondo, Ramadhani SO
Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title_full Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title_fullStr Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title_full_unstemmed Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title_short Antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of Terminalia brownii roots and stem
title_sort antimicrobial activity and brine shrimp toxicity of extracts of terminalia brownii roots and stem
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851717/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17394672
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-7-9
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