Effects of Myrmecodia platytyrea extract on immunology status (in vitro) / Khadijah Jafni

The in vitro study on immunology status is performed to determine the immunomodulatory effect of extracts on cell lines. The purpose of this study is to investigate the immunomodulatory response of Myrmecodia platytyrea hexane and methanol extracts toward Wistar rat’s lymphocytes and to study the cytotoxic effect of both extracts on macrophage RAW 264.7. Both experiments were using MTS assay to get rate of proliferation and rate of cell death. In determining the lymphocyte proliferation activity, mitogen such as PHA was used as a positive control. The concentrations of Myrmecodia platytyrea of both extracts used in this experiment are 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, and 1 mg/mL. Both extracts induced the proliferation of lymphocytes. However, PHA significantly (p< 0.05) stimulated the proliferation of lymphocytes about 204 % compared with hexane extract and 194 % as compared with methanol extract. Myrmecodia platytyrea extracts also showed concentration – dependant cytotoxicity on macrophage RAW 264.7. For hexane extract, the IC50 value was 6.7 ± 5.7 µg/ml with the maximum inhibition at 102.75 %. While for methanol extract, the IC50 value was 220.3 ± 53.5 µg/ml with the maximum inhibition at 165.06 %. In conclusion, Myrmecodia platytyrea hexane extract is more cytotoxic than methanol extract. On the other hand, both hexane and methanol extracts stimulated the proliferation of lymphocytes. However, methanol extract showed higher proliferative activity towards lymphocytes than hexane extract. It is believed that the proliferation activity of the Myrmecodia platytyrea extracts was due to the flavonoid and terpenoid compounds that contained in both extracts.