Antimalarial activity of Alcoholic Extract of Curcuma longa and Heracleum persicum on Cultivated Plasmodium falciparum 3D7 strain

Introduction: Plasmodium falciparum causes the most fatal form of malaria in human. At present, the common treatments are not effective enough and the incidence of drug resistance is being increased in malarious areas. Therefore, presenting the novel methods for therapeutic purposes assumes significant importance.  Recent studies indicated that aqueous or alcoholic extracts of Curcuma longa and Heracleum persicum showed a broad spectrum of anti-microorganisms activity. In this in vitro study the effects of C. longa and H. persicum extracts were assessed on P. falciparum since there has been limited clinical research into their effectiveness on Malaria. Materials and Methods:  The alcoholic extracts of H. persicum and C. longa were prepared in 10-1, 10-3 and 10-5 mg/ml dilutions. These solutions were tested on P. falciparum with 10% parasitemia in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% hematocrit. Each of dilutions was examined in triplicate and the inhibitory effect of the solutions on parasites was measured via determining the average parasitemia and their schizont rate. Finally, the results were analyzed using SPSS software. Results: The rate of parasitemia declined in three different dilutions of both H. persicum and C. longa. The mean of antiplasmodial inhibitory activity of herbs was 83.23±2.47% in H.persicum and 99.91±0.0% in C.longa. Moreover, all dilutions of both H.persicum and C.longa showed significant effect on decreasing of schizont percentage in comparison with control group (P-value<0.05). Conclusions: the present study indicated that alcoholic extracts of C. longa and H. persicum possess acceptable antiplasmodial effects and could be developed as valuable alternatives to ineffective antimalarial drugs. These results support the claims of recent studies that C. longa and H. persicum, have considerable antimicrobial activities. Considering notable in vitro antiplasmodial efficacy of C.longa and H.persicum, further studies with in vivo method is recommended.