ANTIDEPRESSANT ACTIVITY OF HYDRO-METHANOL LEAF EXTRACT OF Icacina trichantha Oliv. IN MICE

ABSTRACT

Neurological disorders have become a global issue. As a result of the high rate of cases over the years, there is a prompt to develop new medications that will impact and improve the health care system today. This research explores the neuropharmacological features of hydromethanol leaf extract of Icacina trichantha oliv. as an antidepressant.Icacina trichantha oliv. is a plant used to treat various ailments such as malaria, inducing emeis and many more. There are limited research that has been carried out on the leaf in relation to Central Nervous System (CNS) when compared to the tuber and the stem. The leaves were collected from the University of Benin, Edo state, Nigeria and grinded into fine powder. Absolute methanol and distilled water was used to extract the leafs by maceration for 72 hours. Porsolt’s method was used to evaluate for antidepressant activity in mice. Icacina trichantha was administered orally at graded doses (100, 200 and 400mg/kg).The result obtained for tail suspension test (TST) revealed that I. trichantha reduced the duration of immobility at doses 200 and 400 mg/kg, in comparison to the control. The result from forced swim test (FST) was insignificant.