Antileishmanial and cytotoxic activities of four Andean plant extracts from Colombia

Vet World Vol.13 October-2020 Article-19

Research Article

Veterinary World, 13(10): 2178-2182

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2020.2178-2182

Wilson Cardona-G¹, Sara Robledo², Fernando Alzate³, Andrés F. Yepes¹, Cristian Hernandez¹, Ivan Dario Velez², Juan Carlos Calderon¹, and Isabel Vásquez Tabares¹

1. Chemistry of Colombian Plants, Institute of Chemistry, Natural and Exact Sciences Faculty, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia.
2. Group of Botanical Studies, Institute of Biology, Natural and Exact Sciences Faculty, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia.
3. PECET, Medical Research Institute, School of Medicine, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia.

Background and Aim: Licania salicifolia (L.S) Cuatrec., Persea ferruginea (P.F) Kunth, Oreopanax floribundus (O.F), and Psychotria buchtienii (P.B) belong to the families Chrysobalanaceae, Lauraceae, Araliaceae, and Rubiaceae, respectively, which have been used as medicines by communities in the Andes. This study evaluated the leishmanicidal and cytotoxic activities of alcohol and non-alcohol extracts from four Andean plant extracts (L.S, O.F, P.F, and P.B).

Materials and Methods: Extracts were obtained by percolation with solvents of different polarities – hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, and ethanol. Phytochemical screening was conducted based on reported methods. All products were evaluated in vitro to determine the leishmanicidal activity against amastigotes of Leishmania panamensis and cytotoxicity against U937 cells.

Results: Flavonoids, triterpenes, and tannins were the main secondary metabolites found. From the results, dichloromethane extracts from O.F and P.B, ethanol extract from P.B, and ethyl acetate extracts of all plants were active, with EC50 <30 μg/mL. Ethyl acetate was the most active extract, which showed EC50 values of 9.8, 14.1, 23.7, and 25.5 μg/mL, for L.S, P.B, O.F, and P.F, respectively. Hexane extracts from P.B and O.F exhibited moderate activity with EC50 values of 84.8 and 87.4 μg/mL, respectively. Hexane and ethanol extracts from O.F, ethyl acetate, and ethanol extracts from L.S, and all extracts from P.F were not toxic. Alternatively, hexane and dichloromethane extracts from L.S and P.B as well as dichloromethane and ethyl acetate extracts from O.F displayed high toxicity.

Conclusion: Based on the activity we observed, ethyl acetate extract can continue in its usage in the search for new antileishmanial drugs, mainly ethyl acetate extract from L.S showed activity comparable to meglumine antimoniate and was not cytotoxic. Keywords: Araliaceae, Chrysobalanaceae, Lauraceae, Rubiaceae, Leishmaniasis, Licania salicifolia, Oreopanax floribundus, Persea ferruginea, Psychotria buchtienii.

Keywords: Araliaceae, Chrysobalanaceae, Lauraceae, Rubiaceae, Leishmaniasis, Licania salicifolia, Oreopanax floribundus, Persea ferruginea, Psychotria buchtienii.

How to cite this article: Cardona-G W, Robledo S, Alzate F, Yepes AF, Hernandez C, Velez ID, Calderon JC, Tabares IV (2020) Antileishmanial and cytotoxic activities of four Andean plant extracts from Colombia, Veterinary World, 13(10): 2178-2182.

Received: 17-06-2020 Accepted: 11-09-2020 Published online: 19-10-2020

Corresponding author: Wilson Cardona-G E-mail: wilson.cardona1@udea.edu.co

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2020.2178-2182

Copyright: Cardona-G, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.