Phytochemical screening, antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer activities on cervical cancer cell lines and aero-digestive extract of <i>Moringa oleifera</i>

Abstract

The phytochemical screening showed that the <i>Moringa oleifera</i> (MO) extract contained many compounds such as polyphenols, polyterpenes, sterols, reducing sugars, and hydrolysates tannins. The MICs of MO extract for microbial strains is 0.73 mg/ml for <i>Escherichia coli</i>, <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i>, 7.5 mg/ml for <i>Enterococcus faecalis</i>, <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> and 0.5 mg/ml for <i>Candida albicans</i>. The MO extract has an IC₅₀ of 3.403 mg/ml has an antioxidant activity by DPPH radical scavenging. The cytotoxic activity of MO extract was evaluated by determining the content of lactate dehydrogenase released by the lysed cells. MO extract exhibited cytotoxic activity against HeLa and FaDu cell lines with an identical IC₅₀ value of 25 µg/ml. We did not observe any remarkable decrease cytotoxic activity when these lines were exposed to the MO extract after 48 h. Our findings help to support the promising role of MO as anticancer agent and open a new challenge for studying DNA fragmentation.