Abstract
Background:
Malaria is still one of the most severe public health problems worldwide. The development of treatment, prevention, and control of malaria is one of the substantial problems in the world.
Aims:
To investigate the in vitro antimalarial activity of Syzygium cumin methanol fruit fraction.
Methods:
Syzygium cumini L fruit powder was macerated with methanol (PA) and the extract obtained was fractionated using the liquid-liquid partition method with n-hexane, ethyl acetate, butanol, chloroform, methanol, and water solvents. In vitro antimalarial assay was conducted using the culture of P. falciparum 3D7 strain culture that had reached > 5% growth and was examined for IC 50 values using a 24-well microplate in duplicate. Each treatment and control well contained 1080 µl of complete media. Well number 1 was added with 120 µl fraction, then the solution was diluted until it reached 0.01,0.1, 1,10,100 µg/ml the final concentration in the microtiter well. The control only contained complete media and infected erythrocytes without the addition of anti-malarial drugs. The microplate was incubated for 48 hours. After 48 hours a thin blood smear was made fixed with methanol and stained with 20% Giemsa for 20 minutes to determine the IC 50 value by plotting sample concentrations and percentage of parasitaemia in excel.
Results:
The IC50 values of ethyl acetate fraction, n.hexane fraction, butanol fraction, and water fraction were 1.189 µg/ml, 76.996 µg/ml, 1,769 µg/ml, and 15.058 µg/ml respectively. Whereases the IC50 values of C1 fraction (mix fraction from chloroform: methanol 100:0 and 90:10) and C4 fraction (mix fraction from chloroform: methanol 20:80, 10:90 and 0:100) were 100.126 µg/ml and 1.015 µg/ml respectively. The results showed that the IC50 value of ethyl acetate, butanol, and C4 fraction were lower than 10µg/ml and were considered as good activity (strong antimalarial activity).
Conclusion:
The ethyl acetate, butanol and C4 subfraction from Syzygium cumini fruit have the potential to be developed as an antimalarial agent.

Key words: Infectious disease, Malaria, IC 50, Syzygium cumin L fruit