Antiplasmodial activity of Indigofera spicata root extract against Plasmodium berghei infection in mice

BACKGROUND: In addition to pharmacovigilance and pharmaco-economic concerns, resistance to anti-malarial medicines has been documented in all classes of anti-malarials and this is further worsened by resistance to common insecticides by malaria vector, which is a major threat to malaria control. As a means of facing the challenges of searching for new anti-malarial agents, the current study focused on evaluation of anti-malarial activity of root extract of Indigofera spicata. METHODS: Chloroquine-sensitive rodent malaria parasite, Plasmodium berghei (ANKA strain) was used to infect the Swiss Albino mice in 4-day suppressive and curative models. The crude hydromethanolic root extract of I. spicata at 200, 400 and 600 mg/kg doses was administered to a group of five mice. Important parameters, such as level of parasitaemia, packed cell volume (PCV), survival time, and body weight were determined and the significance of the differences between mean values of the five groups was analysed by one-way ANOVA followed by post hoc Tukey’s Multiple Comparison test. RESULTS: In both the suppressive and curative models, 400 and 600 mg/kg doses of the extract suppressed the level of parasitaemia significantly (p < 0.001) compared to the vehicle-treated groups, 34.93 and 53.42%, respectively. However, only the mice which were treated with the 600 mg/kg dose of the extract had significant difference in their mean survival time. In other parameters, namely PCV and mean body weight, there was no statistically significant difference between the extract-treated groups when compared to the negative control. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed that the root extract of I. spicata possesses anti-malarial activity and necessitates further scientific validation.