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Mosquitocidal and antiplasmodial activity of Senna occidentalis (Cassiae) and Ocimum basilicum (Lamiaceae) from Maruthamalai hills against Anopheles stephensi and Plasmodium falciparum

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Abstract

Each year, mosquito-borne diseases infect nearly 700 million people, resulting to more than 1 million deaths. In this study, we evaluated the larvicidal, pupicidal, and smoke toxicity of Senna occidentalis and Ocimum basilicum leaf extracts against the malaria vector Anopheles stephensi. Furthermore, the antiplasmodial activity of plant extracts was evaluated against chloroquine (CQ)-resistant (CQ-r) and CQ-sensitive (CQ-s) strains of Plasmodium falciparum. In larvicidal and pupicidal experiments, S. occidentalis LC50 ranged from 31.05 (I instar larvae) to 75.15 ppm (pupae), and O. basilicum LC50 ranged from 29.69 (I instar larvae) to 69 ppm (pupae). Smoke toxicity experiments conducted against adults showed that S. occidentalis and O. basilicum coils evoked mortality rates comparable to the pyrethrin-based positive control (38, 52, and 42 %, respectively). In antiplasmodial assays, Senna occidentalis 50 % inhibitory concentration (IC50) were 48.80 μg/ml (CQ-s) and 54.28 μg/ml (CQ-r), while O. basilicum IC50 were 68.14 μg/ml (CQ-s) and 67.27 μg/ml (CQ-r). Overall, these botanicals could be considered as potential sources of metabolites to build newer and safer malaria control tools.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mr. N. Muthukrishnan and Mr. A. Anbarasan (National Centre for Diseases Control, Mettupalayam, India) for their help in the mosquito collection and identification. We would like to thank the Department of Science and Technology (New Delhi, India), Project No. DST/SB/EMEQ-335/2013, for providing the financial support. This work was also supported by the King Saud University, Deanship of Scientific Research, and College of Sciences Research Center. Funders had no role in the study design, the data collection and analysis, the decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Heinz Mehlhorn and Giovanni Benelli are Editor in Chief and Editorial Board Member of Parasitology Research, respectively. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the Parasitology Research policies on sharing data and materials.

Compliance with ethical standards

All applicable international and national guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Entomology, Department of Zoology, School of Life Sciences, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, 641 046, Tamil Nadu, India

    Kadarkarai Murugan, Narayanan Aarthi, Kalimuthu Kovendan, Chellasamy Panneerselvam, Balamurugan Chandramohan, Palanisamy Mahesh Kumar, Duraisamy Amerasan, Manickam Paulpandi, Ramachandran Chandirasekar, Devakumar Dinesh, Udaiyan Suresh & Jayapal Subramaniam

  2. Department of Reproduction, National Research Institute for Child Health and Development, Tokyo, 157-8535, Japan

    Akon Higuchi

  3. Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia

    Abdullah A. Alarfaj

  4. Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Marcello Nicoletti

  5. Department of Parasitology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Heinz Mehlhorn

  6. Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Pisa, via del Borghetto 80, 56124, Pisa, Italy

    Giovanni Benelli

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  1. Kadarkarai Murugan
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  2. Narayanan Aarthi
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  3. Kalimuthu Kovendan
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Correspondence to Giovanni Benelli.

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Murugan, K., Aarthi, N., Kovendan, K. et al. Mosquitocidal and antiplasmodial activity of Senna occidentalis (Cassiae) and Ocimum basilicum (Lamiaceae) from Maruthamalai hills against Anopheles stephensi and Plasmodium falciparum . Parasitol Res 114, 3657–3664 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-015-4593-x

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