Anti-Sickling and Antibacterial Activities of Extracts from a Congolese Diplopod (Tachypodoiulus sp., Arthropoda)

Abstract

Zoo-pharmacognosy is a mean by which animal self-heal by using of plants and invertebrates. Because of their phylogenetic closeness and common neural pathways of chemosensory perception, humans and great apes, when displaying symptoms of illness learn to select some biological resources as medicine: e.g. diplopods secretions is used by great apes to heal against various skin bacterial infectious diseases which are also recurrent pathologies of the SCD. The present study evaluated the antisickling and antimicrobial activities of organic acids and alkaloids extracted from a Congolese diplopod using Emmel test and micro-dilution technique respectively.The chemical screening performed on the diplopods extract revealed the presence of phenolic compounds, alkaloids, quinones, terpenoids and organic acids. The results of bioassays revealed that organic acids and alkaloids crude extracts possess promising antisickling and antibacterial activities in vitro as revealed by both the observed normal biconcave form of sickle erythrocyte (normalization rate >80%) and the bacterial (S. aureus ATCC 25923) growth inhibition. The mean values of MIC are 61.5 µg/mL and 125 µg/mL respectively for organic acids and alkaloids extracts. Diplopods can be serving as a new source of antisickling and antibacterial bioactive molecules that could be duplicated by organic synthesis chemistry for formulating drugs to manage SCD. For the best of our knowledge, this is the first time report on the antisickling activity of organic acids and alkaloids extracts of animal origin.