In-Vitro Cultivation of Plasmodium Falciparum in Jatropha Curcas Plant Medium to Determine Anti-Plasmodia Activities.

Abstract

Most studies for in-vitro cultivation of Plasmodium falciparum were based on RPMI 1640 medium which was found expensive and cumbersome most especially for Africa settings where the disease is endemic with high poverty rate. This present study involved the usage of  Jatropha curcas plant medium for cultivating malaria parasite in laboratory environment. The cultivation of the parasites were achieved by using liver extract and 10% human serum and the sensitivity test was carried out using ethanolic extracts of Azadracta indica. During the cultivation at 72 hours, medium with liver extract only has an increased parasitaemia of 2 to 5.9% and with addition of human serum increased from 3.1 to 7.4% which was discontinued at 72 hours due to complete digestion of red blood cells next day. Also, the experiment was continued with another set of Jatropha curcas plant medium and when 0.2% uninfected blood was added at interval for 120 hours, the growth yielded  to 17.5%. Also, when the sensitivity test were carried out using ethanolic extracts of Azadirachta indica at 500µg/ml and 31.3µg/ml concentration, the growth rate increased  to 334 (30.1%) and 449 (6.1%) for the parasitized cells respectively.

Keywords:  In-vitro cultivation, Azadracta indica , Plasmodium falciparium,  Jatropha curcas