Antiplasmodial activity of two marine polyherbal preparations from Chaetomorpha antennina and Aegiceras corniculatum against Plasmodium falciparum

• Published in: Parasitology research (1987) 2011, Vol.108 (1), p.107-113
• Main Authors: Ravikumar, Sundaram, Ramanathan, Ganesan, Jacob Inbaneson, Samuel, Ramu, Andy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aegiceras corniculatum; Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Animals; Antimalarials - isolation & purification; Antimalarials - pharmacology; Antimalarials - toxicity; Biological and medical sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Chaetomorpha antennina; Chlorophyta - chemistry; Disease Models, Animal; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; General aspects and techniques. Study of several systematic groups. Models; Human protozoal diseases; Immunology; India; Infectious diseases; Invertebrates; Malaria; Malaria - drug therapy; Medical Microbiology; Medical sciences; Mice; Microbiology; Myrsinaceae - chemistry; Original Paper; Parasitic diseases; Plant Extracts - isolation & purification; Plant Extracts - pharmacology; Plant Extracts - toxicity; Plasmodium berghei; Plasmodium berghei - drug effects; Plasmodium falciparum; Plasmodium falciparum - drug effects; Protozoal diseases; Rats; Sea water ecosystems; Synecology
• ISSN: 0932-0113; 1432-1955
• DOI: 10.1007/s00436-010-2041-5

The ocean covers more than 70% of earth surface and hosts most 300,000 described species of plants and animals to use, which have been virtually unexploited for the development of medicines. Marine plants are the good source of biologically active entities which exhibit therapeutic properties, when applied single or in combination of different plant extracts (polyherbal). Polyherbal preparations are always a complex mixture of different forms and thus different compounds, which might act as agonistic, synergistic, complementary, antagonistic or toxic way. The present study was initially carried out to test the antiplasmodial activity of 13 mangrove plants and eight seaweeds species distributed along the coast of south India. Of these, mangrove species Aegiceras corniculatum and the seaweed species Chaetomorpha antennina have shown maximum antiplasmodial activity. Hence, the present study was mooted out to increase the percentage of antiplasmodial activity when applied as polyherbal preparations. The effect of marine polyherbal preparations from the methanolic extracts of two marine plants A. corniculatum and C. antennina for their antiplasmodial activity was tested. It shows that the polyherbal extract showed 63.50 ± 0.408% suppression of parasitaemia against Plasmodium falciparum at 1.5 mg ml⁻¹ concentration. In vivo test was carried out with rat animal model to find out the effectiveness of the polyherbal extracts in the live system, which reveals that polyherbal extracts have exhibited remarkable antiplasmodial activity (50.57 ± 0.465%) against Plasmodium berghei at 120 mg kg⁻¹ bw. This study shows that combinations of mangrove plants and seaweeds extracts had a source of lead compounds for the development of new drugs for the treatment of malaria.