Isolation and Characterization of Compounds from Roots of Moringa stenopetala, and Evaluation of their Antileishmanial Activities

Abstract

The objective of this study was to isolate compounds from the roots of Moringa stenopetala, and to evaluate their antileishmanial activity based on previous research re sults which revealed that the root extracts of this plant have promising antileishmanial activity. Three compounds were isolated from the roots of this plant species. The compounds are MS-1, MS-2 and MS-3. The structures of MS-2 and MS-3 were proposed to be triglycerides based on the observed spectral ( 1 HNMR, 13 CNMR, DEPT and IR) data and reported data in literature. Thus, MS-2 and MS-3 were identified as 1,3-dilinoleoyl-2-olein and 1, 3-dioleoyl-2-linolein, respectively. However, the structure of MS-1 was not proposed since it was not possible to do so based on the available spectral data. The bio-activity in vitro test was done using microculture radioisotope technique which determines the growth inhibition (IC50 values) of the isolated compounds. The results indicated that MS-2 and MS-3 were found to be more active as compared to MS-1 in their inhibitory activities of promastigotes of the test strain L. aethiopica. With regard to their antileishamnial activities, the inhibitory activities of the compounds against the amastigotes of the parasite were found to be comparable to each other and to the reference drugs (Amphoteisine B and Miltefosine) (Section 3.0).