IN VITRO ACTIVITY OF CAMELLIA SINENSIS EXTRACTS AGAINST L.MAJOR AND L.INFANTUM PROMASTIGOTES USING THE COLOROMETRIC MTT ASSAY

Plant extracts and plant-derived compounds are unlimited sources of chemical diversity for identification of new medicinal agents that are commonly used to treat infectious diseases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the in vitro antileishmanial activity of camellia sinensis extracts against L. infantum and L. major promastigotes by using colorimetric MTT assay as compared to the pentavalent antimonial compound (meglumine antimonite).

The extract was dried and dissolved in DMSO 1% solvent and further dilutions were obtained with RPMI 1640. Promastigotes of L. major and L. infantum were kept in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% of FCS. 100 µl of leishmania major or leishmania infantum promastigotes (1x106 cells/100µl) at logarithmic phase of treated with different concentrations of extract in two fold serial dilutions and after incubation time, MTT solution was added to each well in 96 well plate, then absorbance was read with ELISA reader in 570 nm.

Daccordingly the data showed that camellia sinensis have leishmanicidal activity against L.major and L.infantum promastigotes. C. sinensis had IC50 of 19 µg/ml for L.major promastigotes whereas for L.infantum with IC50 of 12µg/ml after 72 h of incubation. Glucantime had IC50s of 21.8 μg/ml, and 10.16 μg/ml for both strains, respectively.

This study revealed a new antileishmanial compound against promastigotes of L. major and L. infantum and proposes that C. sinensis has the capablity of being used in leishmaniasis but further studies are required to find out its activity against intra-cellular form of leishmania (amastigote).