1.0 INTRODUCTION
Medicinal plants are known to contain substances which could be used for treatment purposes or used to produce drugs [1]. Africa and Nigeria is favoured with numerous and readily available plants with medicinal properties.
The local use of Natural plants for primary health remedies is common practice in Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world [2].
The use of plants extracts or their active principle may serve as sources of intermediate compounds for synthesizing analog drugs [3].
The plant is claimed to also exhibit anti-helmitic and antimalarial properties [4].
The phytochemical constitution and therapeutic effects of most of these plants are documented. One of these plants is Garcinia Kola a fruit of nut-bearing tropical tree native to Nigeria’s coastal rainforest [5]. It is also known as bitter Kola and consumed all over the country either leisurely or for its medicinal values. In addition, the plant possess hepato-protective values [6,7], analgesic and hypo-glycemic activities [8,9].
Many of such plants known to be used primitively to alleviate symptoms of illness have been screened to have medicinal importance, some of which includes Azadirachtaindica (Dogonyaro), V. Amygdalina (Bitter leaf) Allium satium (Garlic), O. gratissimum (scent leaf) and ZingiberOfficinale (Ginger). These plants have been reportedly used in the treatment of ailments such as stomach disorder, fever symptoms and cough traditionally [10]. It is documented that Vernonia Amygdalina has been used traditionally in blood clothing and elicited a substantial reduction in the level of glucose in the blood. [11] It has been reported that V. Amygdalina has hypoglycemic activity, they observed a close dependent reduction in fasting blood sugar level in alloxan-induced diabetic rats after treatment with different concentration of aqueous leaf extract [12]. It is also demonstrated, Vernonia Amygdalina leaf extract as a DNA-damaging of anti-cancer agent in the management of breast cancer. The wide use of antibiotic (drugs) in the treatment of infections has emergence and spread of resistant strains. The emergence of multiple drug resistant bacteria (MDR) has become a major cause of failure of the treatment of infectious diseases [13].
Findings yields great significance in health delivery systems, since it could be used as an alternative treatment to orthodox antibiotics in the treatment of diseases caused by bacterial isolates especially as they frequently develop resistance to known antibiotic and reduce the cost of obtaining care as observed by [14, 15], documented antibacterial activity of these plants on selected gram positive and negative bacterial isolates [16] showed the extracts of ZingiberOfficinale, MyristicaFrangrans, Ocimumgratisssum, thyme, guava showed anti-bacterial activity against anti-bacteria such as pseudomonasaeruginosaetc[17]
All parts of the plants are pharmacologically suspected to be useful. Both the roots and leaves are used in the treatment of hiccups, stomach discomfort and kidney, among others [18].
For these reasons, researchers are increasingly turning their attention to herbal product for new leads to develop better drugs and also identifying the active ingredients responsible for the treatment of those multiple drug resistant bacterial.
1.2 Botanical Classification of Bitter leaf
Bitter leaf belong to the Kingdom of Plantae,Phylum of Tracheophyta, Class of Magnoliopsida, Order of Asterales, Family of Asteraceae, Genus of Vernonia, Species of Vernonia amygdalina[19]
1.3 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The world is still experiencing a wide evolution of new diseases and high cost of orthodox antibiotics, there are still high resistance of bacteria, fungi and virus to orthodox antibiotics. Some antibiotic are still toxic, and have adverse effect on patient body and therefore, it becomes imperative to search for new, affordable, available and effective alternative antibiotics, hence the need for traditional medicine still remain the hope of common man. Therefore there is need to carry-out more researches to determine more areas for traditional medicinal application.
1.4 AIM AND OBJECTIVES
Aim
The research tends to solve the problems of inefficacy, high cost and unavailability, toxicity, of antibiotics it tend to investigate the pharmaceutical active compounds available in vernonia amygdalina.
The objectives would be to;
- Extract the active compounds in the leaf using ethanol.
- Isolate the various components in the ethanol crude extract using column chromatograph
- Test the column eluates on some selected pathogenic bacteria and fungi
- Characterize compounds present in the medicinally potent eluates.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Vernonia amygdalina (bitter leaf) family asteraceae plant is consumed locally as food and serve important ethnomedicinal uses, therefore, the significant of this research is to characterize, identify the active compounds as a way of establishing the efficacy of the plant in the treatment of infectious diseases and also to develop more better drugs to improve health care delivery system in Nigeria.
1.6 SCOPE OF STUDY
This work covered
- Collection and identification of the plant matter
- Extraction of active compounds in the leaf using absolute ethanol as solvent
- Separation of the active compounds into fraction using column chromatography
Preliminary identification of medicinally potent component was done using GC/MS.
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