By Diyoke, Obinna Ifeanyi
Stephania dinklagei is used extensively in South East Nigeria for the traditional treatment of malaria and other associated ailments in form of decoction, in which unspecified quantities are usually consumed without due regards to toxicologic and other adverse effects. In this study, the phytochemicals were assessed as well as the effects of the antioxidant and toxicologic properties of methanol leaf extract of stephania dinklagei in Wistar albino rat. The rats were administered with graded doses of the extract twice daily for three weeks and the control administered with distilled water. Four rats each from the control and test groups were sacrificed every seven days and blood samples collected for analysis. The percentage yield of stephania dinklagei methanol leaf extract was 5.5%. Preliminary phytochemical screening showed that the methanol leaf extract contained alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, steroids, terpenoids, carotenoids, glycosides, anthocyanins and saponins. Anthraquinone was not detected. The quantitative phytochemical analysis showed that the extract contains alkaloids (29.70 + 0.15mg/g), flavonoids (25.30 + 0.10mg/g), steroids (69.70 + 0.10mg/g), saponins (13.57 + 0.21mg/g), tannins (64.21+ 0.21mg/g) cardiac glycosides (1.45 + 0.09mg/g), terpenoids (44.30 + 0.26mg/g), carotenoids (5.88 + 0.52mg/g) and anthocyanin (15.40 + 0.26mg/g). The vitamin content of the leaf extract was found to be vitamin A (44.8 + 0.42mg/100g), vitamin C (27.85 + 0.07mg/100g) and vitamin E (12.7 + 0.28mg/100g). The acute toxicity test of the leaf extract showed no toxicity up to 5000mg/kg body weight as observed over a period of 48 hrs for signs of acute toxicity. The extract was found to moderately scavenge the DPPH and superoxide anion radical in a dose dependent manner compared with their respective standards. The extract however, highly scavenged the hydroxyl radical when compared with the standard, α-tocopherol. There were no significant differences (p >0.05) in serum MDA level in all the groups in week I but significantly increased (p