Abstract

---

The high prevalence of Dermatomycoses coupled with the residual side effect associated with orthodox medicine, treatment failure and cost of the chemotherapeutics, have necessitated exploration of new avenues of controlling these diseases with the use of plant such as Khaya senegalensis which is cheap and available, so that potent and efficacious candidate drugs could be identified. Therefore, this study determined the antidermatophytic activity and the phytochemical constituents of the stem bark extracts of Khaya senegalensis. This was achieved through extraction of powdered stem bark of the plant with methanol, distilled water and chloroform using percolation method. The extracts were subjected to qualitative detection of plant secondary metabolites. The extracts were tested for antidermatophytic activity using agar well diffusion method against Trichophyton mentagrophyte, Trichophyton verrucosum, Trichophyton terrestre and Microsporum canis, followed by testing the extracts for toxicity using brine shrimp lethality assay. Some phytochemicals identified in the stem bark are alkaloids, glycosides, tannins, flavonoids, saponins, steroids and anthraquinone. The antifungal assay indicated that aqueous extract exhibited no activity against all the test organisms. Methanolic extract showed less activity (8mm at 78μg/ml) compared to chloroform extract (14mm at 78μg/ml) when tested against T. mentagraphyte, but when tested against M. canis, Methanolic extract showed greater activity (26mm at 78μg/ml) compared to the chloroform extract (24mm at 78μg/ml). Both methanolic and chloroform extracts showed similar activity on T. verrucosum and T. terrastre. The Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of both methanolic and chloroform extracts ranged from 1.2-2.4 μg/ml while the Minimum Fungicidal Concentration (MFC) was generally 4.9 μg/ml. Toxicity study revealed that the extracts were non toxic at LC50 values of 919.3 μg/ml and 370 μg/ml for methanolic and chloroform extract respectively. It could be concluded that the stem bark of Khaya senegalensis habours important phytochemicals and has methanolic and chloroform extracts that showed good potencies against some dermatophytes. The low toxicity results of the extracts indicate that the plant may not be toxic to human and could be a potential source for the production of antifungal drugs.

Keywords: Antidermatophyte, Activity, Extract, Fungi, Khaya senegalensis.