European Journal of Medicinal Plants

Aim of the Study: The study was aimed to evaluate the cytotoxic, thrombolytic and anthelmintic activity of methanolic extract of the stem of Neolamarckia cadamba (Roxb.).

Place and Duration of Study: The research was carried out in Department of Pharmacy, International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh between January 2013 and November 2014.

Methodology: The study adopted cytotoxic activity using brine shrimp lethality, thrombolytic activity using red blood cell of human and anthelmintic activity by using aquarium worm Tubifex tubifex.

Results: The brine shrimp lethality bioassay was used to determine the cytotoxic activity of crude extract and LC₅₀ values of the extract was found 130.617±0.82 μg/ml. Here vincristine sulphate was used as standard and the result of this positive control was found 8.50±0.16 μg/ml. The extract showed clot lytic activity (39.97±4.67%) as compared to standard streptokinase’s (48.82±2.35%) clot lytic activity in case of thrombolysis assay. The evaluation of anthelmintic activity was  determined by using Tubifex tubifex by using three concentrations viz.,5, 8 and 10 mg/ml of the extract was studied  which was mainly concerned with the determination of time require for paralysis and that of death of the worms. The result showed that as the dose increases, the activity also increases gradually. At highest concentration of 10 mg/ml the anthelmintic activity of the extract’s activity was found significant when compared with standard reference levamisole (1 mg/ml) and distilled water was used as control.

Conclusion: The results of this study substantiates that the methanol extract of the stem of Neolamarckia cadamba (Roxb.) have moderate cytotoxic activity and significant thrombolytic activity and have anthelmintic activity in dose dependent manner, which could be further

exploited for their potential biological activity and might overcome the ever expensive synthetic.