Antisickling Activities of Some Nigerian Medicinal Plants

Sickle cell anaemia (SCA) is a genetic condition caused by defective haemoglobin molecules. Symptoms are often associated with painful crisis often accompanied with vaso-occlusion, severe anaemia, acute chest syndrome, stroke, multiple organ failure, etc. In the pursuit of searching for suitable and affordable anti-sickling herbal remedies, aqueous and ethanolic extracts of ten medicinal plants from relevant previous ethnomedical records, were screened using standard methods involving whole HbSS blood and found to possess varying degrees of anti-sickling activities. For example, Anthocleista vogelii Planch (Gentiaceae) gave 12% inhibitory and 61% reversal activities; Cassia sieberiana DC ripe fruit and pericarp (Leguminoseae) gave 54% inhibitory, 90% reversal activities and 71% inhibitory and 54% reversal activities, Harungana madagascariensis Lam. ex. Poir (Hypericaceae) gave 42% inhibitory and 52% reversal activities and Senna alata (L.) Roxb. (Leguminoseae) gave 19% inhibitory and 84% reversal activities. Thus, the pericarp and whole fruit extracts of Cassia sieberiana pericarp gave the best inhibitory activity (71%) and reversal (90%) activities respectively while S. alata appeared to be a competing candidate for reversal activity (84%). Consequently, an appropriate herbal combination research on the three plant materials to achieve the best inhibitory and reversal activities in a single formulation is in progress.Keywords: Anti-sickling, Cassia sieberiana, Senna alata