Abstract:
Brucea antidysenterica is used for traditional medicine in the treatment of various diseases.
Specifically the leaf part of the plant was known in the history of folklore medicine in different
parts of Ethiopia. The present study was intended to evaluate phytochemicals as well as
antimicrobial activities of leaves extracts of Brucea antidysenterica. The powdered leaves of
the plant were successively extracted with petroleum ether, chloroform/methanol (1:1) and
methanol respectively. The petroleum ether, chloroform/methanol (1:1) and methanol extracts
were subjected to phytochemical screening and the results of the screening revealed the
presence of a diverse phytochemicals in reference to the solvents. One pure compound coded
as BA-1 was isolated from the petroleum ether extract using column chromatography and the
structure of this compound was characterized by IR, UV-Vis and 1D NMR (
1H-NMR, 13CNMR
and DEPT-135). The leaves oil was extracted with n-hexane from the leaves of the plant
by using Soxhlet apparatus and its chemical compositions were characterized by GC-MS. The
GC-MS analysis of n-hexane extract led to the identification of 30 compounds from Brucea
antidysenterica representing 100% of the extracted oil. Among them, hexadecanoic acid,
methyl ester (18.34 %), hydroxy [(1-oxo-2-propenyl) amino-] acetic acid (8.88 %), α-pinene
(8.82 %), 2-ethoxyamphetamine (8.46 %), 1-methyl-2-phenoxyethylamine (7.76 %), methyl
tetradecanoate (6.38 %) and 4-methylene-1-(1-methylethyl) bicyclo [3.1.0] hex-2-ene (6.31 %) were the prevailing compounds. Antimicrobial activities of crude extracts, pure compound,
fractions and leaves oil were performed against four bacterial and two fungal species. All the
tested samples were active against all bacterial species at a dose of 20 µL. BA-1 and fraction
were in active at 10 µL against all bacterial species and A.niger. The crude extracts were also
subjected to test their antitubercular activity and the results showed that the MeOH extract
was very active at minimum concentration (3.12 MIC (µg/mL)) against M.tuberculosis.
