PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIMICROBIAL STUDIES OF THE LEAVES EXTRACT OF PILIOSTIGMA THONNINGII SCHUM Milne - Redh (FABACEAE)

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIMICROBIAL STUDIES OF THE LEAVES EXTRACT OF PILIOSTIGMA THONNINGII SCHUM Milne - Redh (FABACEAE)

ABSTRACT

The plant Piliostigma thonningii which is used in ethno - medicine for the treatment of wounds, ulcers and gingivitis was investigated for its chemical constituents and antimicrobial activity. The leaf of the plant was subjected to extraction procedures to obtain ethanol and n – hexane extracts. The n – hexane extract which was then subjected to preliminary phytochemical screening to revealed the presence of alkaloids, anthraquinones, flavonoids, reducing sugars, saponins, tannins and steroids/terpenes. The phytochemical technique employed was column chromatography. The antimicrobial activity of the n – hexane and ethanol extracts were studied using hospital isolates of ten pathogenic microorganismmms. Extensive chromatographic separation of the n – hexane fraction using silica gel column chromatography led to the isolation of a steroid. Stigmast-5-en-ol (β – Sitosterol), the structure was determined by spectral analysis including 1D and 2D NMR. In the antimicrobial studies, the extracts exhibit activity against six of the ten microorganisms with zone of inhibition ranging from 13 – 16 mm for n – hexane extract and 20 – 27 mm for ethanol extract while the zone of inhibition for the standard antibacterial drug sparfloxacin ranged from 40 – 46 mm and the zone of inhibition for the standard antifungal drug fluconazole ranged from 34 – 37 mm. The results obtained from this study suggest that the fractions of Piliostigma thonningii leaves extracts posses some compounds with antimicrobial activity and validate the ethnomedicinal use of the plant in the treatment of microbial infections.

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