CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, ANTIMICROBIAL AND DOCKING STUDIES OF CHLOROFORM EXTRACTS OF Piliostigma thonningii LEAVES AND SEEDS

Piliostigma thonningii is one of the African’s medicinal plants that is used in ethnomedicine for wound healing and treatment of inflammations, bacterial infections, diarrhoea, worms’ infestation, stomach ache and headache. Chemical studies of the chloroform extracts of the leaves and seeds of the plant using GC-MS technique revealed the presence of 18 and 9 compounds respectively. The antibacterial activity screening of the extracts were studied using hospital isolates of five pathogenic bacteria organisms. Its activity at a varying concentrations of 150, 75, 50, 25, 12.5 and 6.25 mg/ml was investigated against S. aereus, B. cereus, E. coli, S. typhi and P. aeruginosa using agar well diffusion method. The result showed that the extract of the leaf exhibited activity against three micro-organisms in a concentration-dependent pattern, with the highest growth inhibition seen in S. aereus and the lowest growth in S. typhi with MIC of 25 and 75 mg/ml respectively while the seed showed inhibition activity against two microorganisms in a concentration-dependent manner, with the highest growth inhibition seen in S. aereus and the lowest growth in E. coli with MIC of 50 and 75 mg/ml respectively. The result of this research work revealed that P. thonningii has a lot of phytochemicals which might be responsible for its therapeutic potentials in ethnomedicine. The compounds exhibited negative binding affinities in the molecular docking studies. This suggests the potential of the compounds to inhibit the growth of the bacteria species.The results emphasize the therapeutic potential of P. thonningii leaves and seeds extract as a natural source of bioactive compounds with antibacterial activities. This highlights the need for more research to explore its potential use in pharmaceutical applications.