Background:
Cutaneous leishmaniasis lacks effective and well-tolerated treatments. The current therapies mainly rely on antimonial drugs that are inadequate because of their poor efficacy. Traditional medicine offers a complementary alternative for the treatment of various diseases. Additionally, several plants have shown success as anti-leishmanial agents. Therefore, we sought to evaluate the
in vitro
and
in vivo
activity of MEBA against
Leishmania mexicana
.
Materials and Methods:
Methanolic extract of
B. aptera
was obtained by macetration, after we determined
in vitro
anti-leishmanial activity of MEBA by MTT assay and the induced apoptosis in promastigotes by flow cytometry. To analyze the
in vivo
anti-leishmanial activity, we used infected mice that were treated and not treated with MEBA and we determined the levels of cytokines using ELISA. The phytochemical properties were determined by CG-MS and DPPH assay.
Results:
We determined of LC
50
of 0.408 mg/mL of MEBA for
in vitro
anti-leishmanial activity. MEBA induced apoptosis in promastigotes (15.3% ± 0.86). Treated mice exhibited smaller lesions and contained significantly fewer parasites than did untreated mice; in addition, we found that IFN-γ and TNF-α increased in the sera of MEBA-treated mice. GC-MS analysis showed that podophyllotoxin was the most abundant compound. Evaluation of the activity by DPPH assay demonstrated an SC
50
of 11.72 μg/mL.
Conclusion:
Based on the above data, it was concluded that MEBA is a good candidate in the search for new anti-leishmanial agents.