Antimalarial activity of Khaya grandifoliola stem-bark

Khaya grandifoliola (Welw) CDC (Meliaceae) is widely used in West Africa for the treatment of fever. The dried powdered stem-bark of the plant was extracted with various solvents. The resulting extracts and column purified fractions therefrom were tested for their antimalarial properties using Plasmodium berghei berghei for in vivo antimalarial determinations and Plasmodium falciparum for in vitro antiplasmodial activities. The n-hexane extract, the crude and purified fractions gave the most active antimalarial activities with about 91% chemosuppression in vivo and IC50 values of 1.4 mu g/ml (for multi-drug resistant clone) or 0.84 mu g/ml (for Nigerian P. falciparum isolates). These values were comparable to those observed with the reference drug chloroquine diphosphate.