Medicinal & Aromatic Plants
Open Access

Abstract

Evaluation of Antimicrobial, Antioxidant and Cytotoxic Activity of Lovoa trichiliodes Extracts and Essential Oils

Opawale BO, Onifade AK and Ogundare AO

Lovoa trichiliodes is a medicinal plant used in many African countries by traditional practitioners for the treatment of some infectious diseases. The extracts and essential oils from the leaves and stem bark of Lovoa trichiliodes were investigated for their antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxic properties using standard techniques. The 2, 2-diphenyl- 1-picryl-hydrazyl scavenging activity ranged from 03.33 ± 0.03% at 0.05 mg/ml of acetone stem bark extracts to 88.14 ± 0.03% at 2.0 mg/ml of stem bark essential oil. The IC50 ranged from 0.81 ± 0.15 to 1.65 ± 0.03 for the extracts and essential oils. However, the IC50 of the leaf extract (1.65 ± 0.03) and that of the leaf oil (1.52 ± 0.03) were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher than that of ascorbic acid (0.40 ± 0.15) used as control. The antimicrobial assay of the samples revealed a high activity against both the typed and clinical isolates of test pathogens at 50 mg/ml for extracts and 50 µg/ml for oil respectively. The leaf extract showed lower level of activity than the stem bark extract against the test organisms compared to the controls. The essential oils from both the leaf and stem bark exhibited higher activities against bacteria than fungi. Bacillus subtilis showed the highest susceptibility to the extracts while Pseudomonas aeruginosa exhibited the least susceptibility to the plant materials. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal/fungicidal concentration (MBC/MFC) ranged from 2.5 to 200 mg/ml and 5 to 50 mg/ml for the extracts while that of oils ranged from 3 to 40 µg/ml and 5 to 75 µg/ml respectively. All the extracts and essential oils showed high level of lethality on brine shrimp larva with LC50 ranging from 0.71 to 52.65 ppm. These results confirm the basis for the use of this plant in traditional medicine as remedy against several diseases and prospect for antibiotic drug development for the treatment of ailments caused by the test pathogens.