Antimalarial and hepatoprotective effects of entire plants of Anastatic hierochuntica

Abstract

Anastatica hierochuntica has been used as a traditional medicine for the treatment of variety of diseases including parasitic disease. Intraperitoneal and oral administrations of ethanol, chloroform and aqueous whole plant extracts (50, 100, 200 and 400 UL kg-1) of A.hierochuntica were screened in the 4 day suppressive assays for their anti-malarial properties against plasmodium berghei in mice. Both Intraperitoneal and oral treatments of plant extracts showed suppression activities in all groups of mice with the highest values were noted by the 100 and 200 UL kg-1doses of the ethanol extract and by the 100 UL kg-1dose of the chloroform extract which significantly decrease the parasitaemias and increased the survival times of the infected mice. One the other hand, the aqueous showed a dose, dependent suppression activity by which the 200 and 400 Ulkg-1 extracts doses showed significant degrees of suppression in the infected mice. The results of this study confirm the usage of this plant in the Middle East folk medicine as parasitic remedy. The present study also shown that the A.hierochuntica extract posses a significant hepatoprotective effect against D-glactosamine induced cytotoxicity in primary cultured mouse hepatocytes.