South Asian Research Journal of Natural Products

Different parts of Funtumia africana have been exploited by trado-medical practitioners to cure an array of diseases. The study is intended to determine to the flavonoid content and assess the antioxidant, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory activities of methanolic leaf extract of F. africana in Wistar rats. For the antioxidant activity, hydrogen peroxide scavenging, hydroxyl scavenging and copper ion reducing antioxidant capacity tests were determined. Anti-inflammatory activity and analgesic properties were evaluated utilizing the formalin induced paw edema test and the hot plate method respectively. Furthermore, high performance liquid chromatography technique (HPLC) was used for quantification of flavonoids. The in vitro antioxidant result exhibited potent copper ion reducing antioxidant activity of the extract with an IC₅₀ value of 1.64 compared to the standard ascorbic acid. The result of the in vivo anti-inflammatory activity revealed that the plant extract at 1500 mg/kg dosage possessed significant anti-inflammatory activity (p<0.05) by reducing the paw edema from 2.53±0.12 to 2.26±0.06 with a 13.07% inhibition in the preventive acute inflammatory while for curative F. africana at 500 mg/kg dosage reduced the paw edema from 2.40±0.10 to 2.03±0.21 with a 15.41% inhibition. Also F. africana indicated noteworthy analgesic activity (p<0.05) by increasing the latency of thermal stimuli from 5 seconds to 11sec. HPLC fingerprinting gave 30 different flavonoids in different quantities. The outcomes of this investigation have shown that F. Africana methanol leaf extract possesses antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic properties which could be attributed to flavonoid compounds such as quercetin, kaempferol, and apigenin present in the extract.