Immunomodulatory Activities of Piper guineense Leaves in Wistar Rats

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Abstract

Piper guineense is composed largely of important phytochemicals which include alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, saponins, resins and essential oil. In this research, the immunomodulatory activity of aqueous leaf extract of Piper guineense was determined by assessing the effect of the extract on cellular and humoral immune functions in seventy-two female Wistar rats which were fed orally with the extract for seven days. The humoral immune response was determined by assessing the effect of the extract on hemagglutination antibody (HA) titre. The cellular immune response was determined by assessing the effect of the extract on Delayed Type Hypersensitivity (DTH). Cyclophosphamide was used as an immunosuppressant to determine the effect of the extract in rats in an immunocompromised condition. In the humoral test, the plant showed a dose-dependent increase with all the tested doses with a higher significant effect in the 400 mg/kg. Hemagglutination titre which was decreased in the cyclophosphamide-treated group was observed to increase significantly with the administration of both doses of the extract. The Delayed Type Hypersensitivity response (DTH) revealed that the plant extract increased DTH significantly at both 200 mg/kg and 400 mg/kg doses when compared with the control (p <0.01). The increase was significant when compared with the negative control (p<0.01). The overall trend obtained in the parameters studied for the assessment of immunomodulatory activity of aqueous leaf extract of Piper guineense indicated that the extract has ameliorative effects on cyclophosphamide-induced immunosuppression and is a good candidate as an imunostimulatory agent

Keywords: Delayed-type hypersensitivity, Hemagglutination titre, Immunomodulatory, Iimmunostimula,

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