Abstract:
Medicinal plants are considered as a good resource for novel and effective pharmaceuticals.
Dracaena. steudneri is widely used for cough treatment of labor, splenomegaly, hernia, asthma
and related chest problems in children, fibroids and infertility in women. The stem bark of the
same plant is used to treat tuberculosis in Kenyan and Ugandan. However, phytochemical and
bioactivity information from the stem bark of this plant is limited. Therefore, the study was
aimed at investigating phytochemicals from stem bark of D. steudneri and evaluating their
antibacterial activities. The phytochemicals were extracted using maceration. The extract was
subjected to column chromatography using solvent gradients. NMR techniques (1D & 2D NMR)
were used for the structural elucidation of isolated compounds. Disk diffusion method was used
to evaluate anti-bacterial activity of the crude extract and isolated compounds. Three compounds
(323, 324 and 325) were isolated from the stem bark of the study plant and they were elucidated
as droserone (323), 5-hydroxy-2, 3-dimethyl-7-methoxychromone (324) and ergosterol (325).
The crude (100 mg/ml) has shown marginal activity against the four test strains (S. aureus, S.
typhi, E. coli and B. cereus), and the isolated compounds showed little antibacterial activity
against the tested bacterial strains. Further study is required to search for antimicrobial
compounds against bacterial and fungi strains. Moreover, the assessment of the relationship
between D. steudneri species and fungi is also needed.
