Preliminary Study on Antimalarial Activities of Thai Herbal Medicines

Abstract

Malaria remains one of the most serious causes of mortality and morbidity in the
tropics. The problems of multi-drug resistance Plasmodium falciparum have been
aggravating and up to present, there is still no new clinical effective antimalarials to replace
artemisinin and derivatives. It is therefore an urgent need to search for new promising
antimalarial drug targets. In this study, we assess the in vitro antimalarial activity of the
ethanolic extracts of the four Thai medicinal plants/regimen against the chloroquine(CQ)-
resistant (K1) and CQ-sensitive (3D7) strains of P.falciparum. The ethanolic extracts of all
medicinal plants/regimen showed promising antimalarial activity against both CQ-resistant
and CQ-sensitive strains of P.falciparum, of which the extract of Piper chaba Hunt
exhibiting the most potent antimalarial activity with IC50 of less than 10 μg/ml against both
CQ-resistant and CQ-sensitive strains. Proteomics study of the extracts of these four
plants/recipe are being investigated to identify their molecular targets of antimalarial action.