Background: Emergence of antimalarial drug resistance and the limited availability of new agents underscore the need to evaluate traditional medicinal plants as potential sources of novel therapies. Artocarpus heterophyllus stem-bark is used in ethnomedicine for febrile illnesses, but robust in vivo efficacy and safety data are limited. This study evaluated the chemosuppressive antiplasmodial activity and acute oral safety of the methanolic stem-bark extract of A. heterophyllus in a murine malaria model. Methods: This randomized controlled preclinical experimental study used adult female Swiss albino mice experimentally infected with chloroquine-sensitive Plasmodium berghei. Stem-bark of A. heterophyllus was air-dried, pulverized, and extracted with methanol. Mice were randomly allocated into treatment groups (n = 5 per group) and administered graded oral doses of the extract (25–200 mg/kg) using the standard 4-day suppressive test (Peters’ test). Parasitaemia, and body temperature were recorded. The median effective dose (ED₅₀) was estimated using four-parameter logistic regression. Acute oral toxicity was assessed using the OECD up-and-down/limit test to estimate the median lethal dose (LD₅₀) and therapeutic index. Results: The extract produced dose-dependent parasitaemia suppression and significantly prolonged survival compared with untreated controls. The highest suppression (63.45%) occurred at 200 mg/kg. The ED₅₀ was 95.85 mg/kg, while the LD₅₀ exceeded 2000 mg/kg, yielding a therapeutic index >21. Mild hepatorenal changes were observed at high exposure on histopathologic examination. Conclusion: Methanolic stem-bark extract of A. heterophyllus demonstrates significant in vivo antiplasmodial activity with a favourable safety margin in mice, supporting further bioactivity-guided isolation of active compounds and preclinical development.
Iwuafor et al. (Sat,) studied this question.