Antileishmanial Effect of Coffea arabica, Salvia rhytidea and Bunium persicum against Leishmania major and Leishmania tropica Promastigotes and Their Cytotoxicity and Antioxidant Activities

Aims: This study was aimed to use Coffea arabica, Salvia rhytidea and Bonium persicum extracts against Leishmania major and L. tropica promastigotes to compare various concentrations of these plant extracts. In addition, their cytotoxicity and antioxidant activities were also evaluated.

Study Design: This study was performed experimentally using various concentrations of three medicinal plant extracts compared to control groups.

Methodology: Fresh seeds of C. arabica and B. persicum and leaves of S. rhytidea were powdered and each plant material was extracted by ethyl alcohol via warm maceration method. Complete medium was used to prepare nine final concentrations (1-1000 µg/ml) for experiments. The cytotoxicity and antioxidant activities of the ethanolic extracts were evaluated using colorimetric cell viability WST1 and DPPH assays. All experiments were performed in triplicate and analyzed by t-test. The optical density (OD) values as measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) were used to calculate the IC50 values. Selectivity index (SI) of the plant extracts was not attributed to cytotoxicity when it was ≥ 10.

Results: The results indicated that B. persicum extract had potent antileishmanial activity against the promastigotes of both Leishmania species based on a dose-dependent response (