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Activity assessment of Tunisian olive leaf extracts against the trophozoite stage of Acanthamoeba

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Abstract

The olive tree (Olea europaea, Oleaceae) has historically provided huge economic and nutritional benefits to the Mediterranean basin. In fact, olive leaf extracts have also been used by native people of this area in folk medicine to treat fever and other diseases such as malaria. Recently, several studies have focused on the extraction of high-added-value compounds from olive leaves. However, no previous studies have been developed in order to evaluate the activity of these extracts against Acanthamoeba. In the present work, olive leaf extracts from five different Tunisian varieties of olive trees (Chemlali Tataouine, Zarrazi, Toffehi, Dhokkar, and Limouni) were obtained by using three different solvents, and their activity against the trophozoite stage of Acanthamoeba castellanii Neff was screened. The IC50/96 h (50 % parasite growth inhibition) was chosen as the appropriate and comparable data to give as previously described. It could be observed that the amoebicidal activity was dose dependent. Trophozoite growth was inhibited by all the tested extracts with IC50 ranging from 8.234 ± 1.703 μg/ml for the alcoholic mixture of the Dhokkar extract to 33.661 ± 1.398 μg/ml for the methanolic extract of the Toffehi variety. The activity in fact was affected especially by the tested variety and not by the solvent extraction, the Dhokkar variety being the most active one as mentioned above.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the grants RICET (project no. RD06/0021/0005 of the programme of Redes Temáticas de Investigación Cooperativa, FIS), Spanish Ministry of Health, Madrid, Spain and the Project FIS PI10/01298 “Protozoosis emergentes por amebas de vida libre: aislamiento y caracterización molecular, identificación de cepas transportadoras de otros agentes patógenos y búsqueda de quimioterapias efectivas” from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. IS was funded by an alternating Scholarship from the University of Carthage, Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. ALA was funded by a grant “Ayudas del Programa de Formación de Personal Investigador, para la realización de Tesis Doctorales” from the Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información from the Canary Islands Government. CMMN was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Fundación Canaria Manuel Morales, La Palma, Canary Islands. JLM was supported by the Ramón y Cajal Subprogramme from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation RYC-2011-08863.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Matériaux-Molécules et Applications, IPEST, University of Carthage, La Marsa, Tunisia

    Ines Sifaoui, Mondher Mejri & Manef Abderabba

  2. University Institute of Tropical Diseases and Public Health of The Canary Islands, University of La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

    Atteneri López-Arencibia, Carmen Ma Martín-Navarro, Jacob Lorenzo-Morales & José E. Piñero

  3. Laboratoire d’Ecologie et de Technologie Microbienne, INSAT, University of Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia

    Nadia Chammem

  4. Centre for Integrative Physiology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Carmen Ma Martín-Navarro

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  1. Ines Sifaoui
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  2. Atteneri López-Arencibia
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  3. Carmen Ma Martín-Navarro
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  5. Mondher Mejri
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  6. Jacob Lorenzo-Morales
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  8. José E. Piñero
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Correspondence to Ines Sifaoui.

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Sifaoui, I., López-Arencibia, A., Martín-Navarro, C.M. et al. Activity assessment of Tunisian olive leaf extracts against the trophozoite stage of Acanthamoeba . Parasitol Res 112, 2825–2829 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-013-3453-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-013-3453-9

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