Anti-Tubercular Activity of Neem Flower Extract

Abstract

Neem – Azadirachta indica, has been used in ayurvedic medicine for more than 4000 yearsdue to its medicinal properties. Neem has many biological activities like antiinflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, antioxidant and anti-viral etc. In our research, we collected neemflowers and shade dried them. The flowers were extracted using ethanol solvent. Initiallyweighed quantities of shade dried flowers (100g) were soaked in ethanol (500mL) for 48hrs.Then the soaked mixture was filtered and flowers are kept aside. The ethanol is separatedfrom the extract using rotavapour at a temperature of 120⁰C. The thick extract was collected atthe end and stored in separately. Flowers were soaked again with ethanol for 24 hrs and theprocess was continued. All the collected extracts were combined and chemical analysis wasdone to find out the presence of chemical constituents like triterpenoids, phenols, flavonoidsetc. Antitubercular activity was performed using MABA method for the ethanolic extract ofneem flowers with a standard rifampicin. The MIC of the standard was found to be 12.5 μg/mL, whereas the MIC of neem flower ethanolic extract was found to be 25 μg/ml.