ABSTRACT
Elaeis guineensis, Arecaceae Jacq. has played valuable role in the treatment of various ailments. Its various parts have great medicinal importance. But the bunches have been greatly underutilized. Hence, the aim of this work was to determine some useful quality control parameters and analgesic activity of its’ bunch. Quality control parameters such as ergastic cell, nutritional (proximate), vitamin C, elemental and metabolite contents were determined using standard methods of analysis; while analgesic effect of the extract of the bunch was screened in mice using formalin - induced pain model. Chemomicroscopy showed the presence of lignin, phenolics and fatty oil. Proximate analysis showed moisture content was( 8.80%),total ash content (2.22 %), crude fat (2.40%), crude fiber (49.45 %), crude protein (5.00%) and carbohydrate content (32.13%). The vitamin C content of the leaf was found to be 61.15mg/100g. Essential minerals such as sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, oxygen, manganese and copper were contained in the powdered leaf; foaming index of the bunch was < 100 while the swelling index was found to be 6.10 mL/g. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) revealed the presence of nineteen (19) valuable constituents in the extract, with caseamine (9371.84 ppm) and caseadine (3730.72ppm) being the most abundant of the constituents. GC - MS revealed the presence of thirty - five (35) constituents with phenol (19.93%) being the most abundant. Acute toxicity of the methanol extract revealed LD50 > 5 g/kg; while the extract had significant (p < 0.05) analgesic activity both peripherally and centrally, at doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg body weight, respectively. This study has established some important quality control parameters for the bunch of E. guineensis which will aid proper identification. It has shown the bunch to contain useful plant metabolites and elements, which may be responsible for its therapeutic activities. The methanol extract of E. guineensis bunch at the tested doses is relatively safe and has analgesic activity. This could be exploited for the treatment of pains.
