Evaluation of In vivo Antimalarial Activities of leaves of <i>Moringa oleifera</i> against <i>Plasmodium berghei</i> in Mice

Abstract

Background: In addition to resistance against drugs, no new drugs have reached the market during the last decade for malaria treatment. This implies the urgent need to search for new drugs from different sources. Medicinal plants are one of such sources for novel drugs. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate antimalarial activity of crude extract of leaves of Moringa oleifera Lam (Moringaceae) in Plasmodium berghei in a mice model. Methods: The acute toxicity test was used as per standard guidelines. To determine parasite inhibition, 4-day Peter’s suppressive test was done. Curative and prophylactic tests were done by applying standard methods. Windows SPSS version 16 was used to analyse the data and analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Post Hoc Tukey’s HSD to compare results between groups. Results: Death was not observed up to a dose of 2000 mg/kg of the plant extract. In all mice treated with the extract, the level of parasitaemia was significantly reduced in comparison with the control group (P < 0.001) and also a very significant difference was observed in comparison with the chloroquine treated group (P < 0.0001) with lower doses. Mean survival time was significantly increased at all treatment doses. It reduced parasitemia in a dose-dependent manner in both curative and prophylactic activity tests resulting in a significant (P < 0.05) reduction of parasitaemia in comparison with the control group. Conclusions: The result of the current study revealed that the extract possessed significant anti-plasmodial activity as displayed by its ability to suppress P. berghei infection in mice. The present study can be considered as confirmation for traditionally claimed use of the plant against malaria treatment.