ABSTRACT

Aliments are parts of human life, but due to resistant nature of synthetic drugs and its cost rate there is need for alternative and there comes medicinal plants which have and continued to play a major role in treating human diseases. Synedrella nodiflora is a medicinal plant that has been used to treat constipation, dysentery and diarrhea. This study is designed to investigate the antimicrobial, antioxidant and laxative activities of synedrella nodiflora. in vitro method of assessment were used to determine the scavenging activities ofthe extract on 2,2- diphenyl-l-picrylhydrozyl(DDPH), Nitric oxide and Anti-lipid peroxidation as well as determination ofthe antibacterial activities against some bacteria strains like staphylococcus aureus, proteus mirabilis, klebsiellapneumonia, Escherichia coli, salmonella typi and pseudomonas aeruginosa. Laxative activity was also carried out on wistar albino rat in this study by diluting the ethanolic extract of the plant using serial dilution. The plant extract was diluted to different concentrations of2000mg, lOOOmg, 500mg, 250mg, 125mg, 62.5mgrespectively and administrated intraperitoneally to the experimental animals. Acute toxicity study ofthe plant extract was determined and the LD50 was found to be (>6400). Ducox was used as control drug for laxative, vitamin c was used as control for antioxidant and ciprofloxacin was used as control for antimicrobial activities. At the end ofthe experiment, the result shows that the activities ofthe plant extract against 2,2-diphenyl-l-picrylhydrozyl(DDPH), Nitric oxide, Anti-lipid peroxidation, bacteria strains and its laxative action were all concentration dependent. The 2,2-diphenyl-l-picrylhydrozyl(DDPH), Nitric oxide and Antilipid peroxidation has an IC50 values of 3.96mg/ml, 4.15mg/ml and 4.38mg/ml respectively. The result ofthe antioxidant reveals potent free radicals scavenging activities. The laxative and antimicrobial activities show a good evidence that the crude extract of synedrella nodiflora is a good source of antimicrobial and laxative agents which justifies its traditional use.