Antimalarial Activity of Andrographis Paniculata in Mice

B. A. H Zainal-Abidin and L. Jang Sing

School of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM – 43600 Bangi, Selangor Malaysia

ABSTRACT: The antimalarial activity of the capsule of dried whole plant parts of herb Andrographis paniculata against Plasmodium berghei in male ICR mice was examined. In this study four concentrations of aqueous extract (AE) of the herb i.e 50, 100, 200 and 400 μL/kg body weight (BW) were given to mice either orally or intraperitoneally (i.p.). Infected mice without treatment and infected mice treated with anti-malarial drug chloroquine diphosphate (10mg/kg BW) were used as negative and positive controls respectively. A dose of 1.0 ª 106 Plasmodium berghei - infected red blood cells injected i.p.ly was used to initiate infection in mice. Thin - and Giemsa’s stained – blood smears were prepared to determine parasitaemias. Results from the four-day suppressive antimalarial tests showed that all four concentrations of AE given orally had varying degrees of antimalarial activities against the parasites. The 200 μL/kg BW dose caused the highest suppressive activitiy i.e. 77.76% as compared to 68.9%, 58.86% and 43.81% caused by the 100, 400 and 50μL/kg BW doses respectively. Results in the i.p treatments of AE also showed almost similar pattern of infections but with inferior implications and that the 200 μL/kg BW dose still caused the highest degree of suppression (68.74%). This dose caused the lowest peak of parasitaemia on D+4 i.e. 1.2 + 1.650 % as compared to 3.85 + 0.240 % in the negative control group and more than 2.0 % in the rest of the treated groups. Results from the prophylactic antimalarial activity tests evidently proved that the 200 μL/kg BW dose caused about 1.7 folds higher degree of suppression to malarial parasitaemias (82.46%) as compared to the 100 μL/kg BW dose (53.07%) and closer to the value shown by the positive control group (94.08%). All these results strongly show that the AE extracts of A. paniculata have antimalarial activity against P. berghei in mice and that the capsule used in this still retains this activity.

KEYWORDS: suppressive antimalarial activity; Andrographis paniculata; aqueous extract (AE); rodent - malaria

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