ABSTRACT
The highly prized plant Moringa Oleifera, which belongs to the Moringales order, Moringaceae family, and Moringa genus, is found throughout many tropical and subtropical nations. It has a wide range of medical applications and is very nutritious. This plant's various parts, including the leaves, roots, seeds, fruit, flowers, and immature pods, have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties as well as other medical uses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of ethanolic extracts of Moringa Oleifera leaves, stem, and roots on physically induced corneo-conjunctival inflammation and elevated intraocular pressure in the rabbit’s eyes. It also compares the effectiveness of the various extracts in treating the induced experimental conditions. Thirty rabbits were used for this experiments. These rabbits were grouped as thus; Group A(elevated IOP + M. Oliefera leaf extract); Group B( elevated IOP + M. Oleifera stem extract); Group C( elevated IOP + M. Oleifera root extract); Group D( inflammation + M. Oliefera leaf extract); Group E (inflammation + M. Oliefera stem extract); Group F (inflammation + M. Oliefera root extract); and Group G (control group). Elevated IOP was induced by giving the animals dexamethasone eyedrops twice daily and 0.5mg tablet once daily. The animals were treated twice daily with 0.2ml of topical treatment solution which is equivalent to two drops of solution twice daily for 5 days. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the extracts caused a significant decrease in IOP with p values of <0.001, 0.001 & 0.001 for the leaf, stem and root extracts respectively ( p ≤ 0.005). although there was observable difference in the effect of the different extracts on IOP, this difference is not statistically significant at p≤0.005 with p values of 0.311 & 0.697 at day 3 and day 5 of treatment respectively. For inflammation, it was observed that all the extracts caused reduction in inflammatory markers with p values of 0.001, 0.064 and 0.324 for the leaf, stem and root extracts respectively.This study has further shown and confirmed that M.Oleifera is a very useful plant that is effective in the treatment of elevated intraocular pressure and physically induced corneo-conjuctival inflammation. It has also shown that there is no ststistically significant difference between the effect of the leaf, stem and root extracts when compared
