Background and Purpose: The root extracts of
Dennettia tripetala G. Baker and
Milicia excelsa (Welw.) C. Berg was investigated for their
in-vitro antioxidant activities.
Materials and Methods: The pulverized roots of
Dennettia tripetala and
Milicia excelsa were extracted separately by cold maceration using ethyl acetate, methanol,
n-butanol and water respectively as the extracting solvents.
In-vitro antioxidant, the activity of root extracts was then investigated using DPPH model. The results obtained was analyzed using One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) involving GraphPad Prism 5 Software.
Results: The antioxidant assay of various extracts, using 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging model, revealed that the ethanol and
n-butanol extracts of
D. tripetala had better radical scavenging activity with IC
50 values of 2.02 and 0.631
µg/mL for ethanol and
n-butanol extracts, respectively. The methanol and ethanol extracts of
M. excelsa showed higher radical scavenging capacity with IC
50 of 0.194 and 8.84
µg/mL compared to that of the ascorbic acid which had IC
50 value of 4.60
µg/mL.
Conclusion: The radical scavenging ability of the extracts could be attributed to the presence of flavonoids and phenolics.