Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of muntingia calabura in aqueous, chloroform and methanol leaves extracts using various assays / Balkis Omar

This study was carried out to determine the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of aqueous, chloroform and methanol extracts of Muntingia calabura using various assays. As compared to standard curve of gallic acid, aqueous and methanol extracts of M. calabura showed high total phenolic content (fPC) which were 2970.4 and 2978.1 respectively. All extracts were found to show remarkable antioxidant activities in both DPPH and superoxide radical scavenging assays. However, the methanol extract showed the highest inhibitory activity with percentage of inhibition yielded 92 to 99% and 85 to 89 % respectively. Lower antioxidant activity was shown by all extracts when tested with thyrosinase inhibitory assay. Using microbroth dilution method, there was no inhibitory action demonstrated by all extracts against methicillin sensitive and resistant strains of S. aureus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa, C. albicans as well as M canis at concentration 5 µg/µl of the samples.