Antimicrobial, Cytotoxicity and Antioxidant Activities from the Stem of Ravenia Spectabilis Lindl

Aim of this study was to determine the Antimicrobial, Cytotoxicity and Antioxidant activities of the stem of Ravenia spectabilis. For this study, the dried stem’s powder of Ravenia spectabilis was subjected to cold extraction with methanol and partitioned with n-hexane, carbon tetrachloride and chloroform. The crude methanolic extracts and its n-hexane, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform soluble partitionates, some column fractions and isolated one pure compound (-fagarine) demonstrated mild to moderate antimicrobial activity against a wide range of Gram-positive and Gramnegative bacteria and fungi. The extractives showed significant cytotoxic activity when tested by brine shrimp lethality bioassay. In addition, the extractives also exhibited significant free radical scavenging activity when compared with the standard drug Tertbutyl-1-hydroxytoluene (BHT). INTRODUCTION: Plants are the natural reservoir of many antimicrobial, antioxidant and anticancer or pesticidal agents. Herbal treatment is very popular because it is easily available, cheap and less toxic. Plants have been a source of medicinal agents for thousands of years and an impressive number of modern drugs have been isolated from plants sources, many of which based on their use in traditional medicine. Most of the people in rural and urban areas of the world were depended on the medicinal plants for the treatment of infectious diseases. Pathogenic bacteria constitute a major cause of morbidity and mortality in humans. The emergence and spread of bacterial resistance has made the treatment of infectious diseases more problematic. Plant-based antimicrobials have enormous therapeutic potential as they can serve the purpose with lesser side effects to heal many infectious diseases. Among the different plant derivetives, secondary metabolites proved to be the most important group of compounds that showed wide range of antibacterial and antifungal activity 1, . So, noble, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases have become a focus for the development of new cost-effective drug in both industrialized and developing countries.