Digital Repository for Department of Pharmacognasy

The poor rate of drug discovery for the control of Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) including schistosomiasis has necessitated effective management of existing drugs by modulating their delivery. Nanotechnology-based colloidal drug carriers have been explored to improve the activity and safety profile of drugs for NTDs including parasitic diseases. In developing new drug delivery systems for schistosomiasis, research efforts have focused mainly on Praziquantel (PZQ) as the sole antischistosomal agent in current clinical practice. Carrier systems of the polymer, inorganic and lipid-based type have been investigated for the delivery of PZQ. However, promising results were obtained using lipid-based delivery systems including liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers and nanoemulsions. Selection of these lipid carrier systems has been based on the lipophilicity of PZQ, controlled drug release, potential increase in its bioavailability by promoting lymphatic absorption to bypass the extensive first pass effect biodistribution to the host liver and enhancement of PZQ interaction with the worm tegument of a similar phospholipid nature.
Sakina Salem Mohammed Saadawi(2-2022)

The ever-increasing demand for natural products and biotechnology, derived from bees and ultramodernization of various analytical devices, has facilitated the rational and planned development of biotechnology products with a focus on human health to treat chronic and neglected diseases. This study aimed to prepare, characterize and examine the stability and evaluation of the antioxidant and the antibacterial activity of Libyan propolis. Propolis Nanoparticles PNP were prepared using particle size reduction, then Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) at a magnification of X 25000, was used for accurate evaluation of the size distribution of NPs. Three different concentration (10, 5, 2.5 mg/ml) of propolis and nano-propolis powder were tested for their 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging activity. The quantitative antioxidant activity test results using UV Spectrophotometer absorbance at 517 nm. The antibacterial activities of propolis and prepared nano propolis at different concentrations (10, 5 and 2.5mg/ml) were tested on bacterial strain, Klebsiella, human mouth, skin, and surface bacteria using cup cut diffusion method. The findings exhibited that the prepared propolis Nanoparticles (PNPs) were generally non-spherical with a size 100-200 nm. The PNP was a nano-sized particle around 316 nm in diameter. Zeta potential of PNP showed a negative surface charge value (− 48 mV) which was sufficiently high to avoid NPs aggregation. This value represents a stable and dispersed suspension of NPs and disables the tendency of aggregations in a short in period of time. Poly dispersity index (PdI) of synthetized PNP was used as a measurement of the size distribution. PdI values for PrNP were generally uniform with PdI 0.3 indicating monodispersity of the prepared systems. The propolis and PNPs displayed good antioxidant activity with inhibition percentage (77%, 46% and 18%) for propolis and (82%, 66% and 37%) for PNPs. Propolis nanoparticles showed to have more antibacterial effect compared to propolis. Libyan propolis nanoparticles has shown to be potential candidates as antioxidant and antibacterial agent.
sakina Salem Saadawi, Rabia O Alghazeer, Hanin N. Mughrbi, Bushra M. Dakhil, Rokaya O. Amara, Khairi A. Alennabi, Riham M. El-Moslemany, Khadija O. Turkman, Masarra A. Daraweel(3-2022)

Metronidazole is an antiprotozoal drug which is also effective against anaerobic bacteria. The availability of several brands of Metronidazole tablets in Libyan pharmacies today places health practitioners and a pharmacist in a problem of drug substitution in case of a particular brand is not available. The aim of the present study was the evaluation and comparison of pharmaceutical equivalence of five different Metronidazole coated tablets 500 mg, which are commercially available in the private pharmacies in Tripoli city, produced by various pharmaceutical companies with different trade names. The pharmaceutical quality of five brands of Metronidazole tablets was analyzed using official and unofficial quality control tests prescribed in different Pharmacopoeia including uniformity of weight, thickness, hardness, disintegration time, drug content as well as dissolution rate and assay. Acceptable external features as well as uniformity in diameter and thickness were revealed for all the tablets. The entire selected brands complied with the official specifications for uniformity of weight, hardness and disintegration, they released more than 75% of their drug content within 45 minutes. It can be concluded that all the brands could be regarded as bioequivalent and therefore can be interchanged in the clinical practice; this sort of study is good indicator for the evaluation of the idealness of commercial products and showed the importance of post marketing investigation for the drugs imported and distributed in Libya.
Sakina Salem Saadawi(12-2021)

Grape seeds extract has therapeutic values including antimicrobial activity, antioxidant effect, wound healing and prevention of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to evaluate and compare antibacterial activity of different species of grape seed) Vitis labrusca, Vitis vinifera and Vitis vinifera( against some bacterial strains (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumonia, Acinetobacter Calcoaceticus, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli). Determine antioxidant effect of grape seed extracts (qualitatively). Antibacterial effects was performed using agar cup cut diffusion method for all bacterial species, followed by using minimum inhibitory concentration MIC for the species showed to be inhibited by grape seeds extracts. Antioxidant assay was done using DPPH scavenging test, methanolic solution of each grape seeds was spotted on TLC paper, sprayed with 0.2 % methanolic solution of diphenyl picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) reagent. Vitamin C was used as positive control. From the results, all grape species didn’t have any effect on K. pneumonia and E. coli, red and black grape seeds showed the highest inhibition zone (20 mm) on Staph. Aureus agar plate, green grape had the highest effect on Sterp. Pneumonia agar plate (20 mm). The lowest effect was for the red grape seeds extract (13 mm) on Acinetobacter calciaceticus. In general the three grape seeds extract had effect on Staph. aureus, Sterp. pneumonia and Acinetobacter calciaceticus. The red and black grape seed extract was effective against Sterp. pneumonia strain at MIC values of 7.8 mg/mL and black grape seeds extract had MIC at 7.8 mg/mL on Staph. aureus. However, the test for MIC of seeds extracts for the rest of bacterial species ranged between 15.62 and 87.5 mg/mL. The result showed that black grape seeds extract had the largest spot change in color indicating strong antioxidant effect. The lowest effect was by red grape seeds. From this result black grape showed to be the best grape seeds extract among the three chosen species in its antibacterial and antioxidant efficacy.
Sakina Salem Mohammed Saadawi(4-2021)

More than 2000 cultivars of Phoenix dactylifera L. are known to grow around the world. Date is an essential fruit in North Africa, and in Libya in particular, it represents an important national food resource. Recently, researchers discovered the medicinal value of different parts of palm tree beside the well known nutritional value of the fruit edible part. In this study five Libyan date seeds (Bestian, Deglet, Abel, Khadrai and Hamrai) were collected from Aljofra region and were screened for phytochemical components and their antimicrobial activity. The phytochemical analysis of methanolic extract of five different Libyan date palm seeds showed the presence of aflavnoids, glycosides, phytosterols, phenolic compound, tannins, and fixed oil, absences of alkaloids and saponine. The susceptibility of bacterial species to five methanolic extracts of Phoenix dactylifera L seeds by cup-cut agar method exhibited Inhibition zones (IZD). That inhibition zone diameters are vary from 15.0 0.3 to 3.02 0.01 against MRSA; 16.040.1 to 6.0  0.7 against Pseudomonas aeruginosa; 14.2 0.1 to 6.00.7 against Proteus vulgaris; 18.3 0.2 to 6.0 0.1 against Staphylococcus aureus; 14.04 0.2 to 2.0 0.02 against E. coli; and 18.0 0.1 to3.2 0.02 against Klebsiella pneumonia. The results of current study shows the antibacterial properties of five Libyan samples of date seed extract against a wide spectrum of bacteria. arabic 21 English 126
Basma Doro, Nahla Labyad, Fadia Gafri(1-2020)

تلعب الأعشاب دائماً الدور الرئيسي في الطب التقليدي في المجتمعات القديمة حول العالم، وزادت شعبيتها مرة اخرى ليست فقط في الدول النامية، ولكن أيضاً في الدول المتقدمة، حيث أن الناس يكافحون للبقاء أصحاء في وجه المرض باستخدام الأدوية الطبيعية التي تعمل متناغمةً مع دفاعات الجسم. وعلى نحو متزايد أيضاً تم تجميع الأدلة العلمية لإثبات أن طب الأعشاب قادر على تقديم معالجة فعالة كالأدوية الحديثة ولكن ببعض التأثيرات الجانبية، ولذلك ارتفعت مبيعات الأدوية العشبية بشكل مفاجئ حتى أصبحت الآن العديد من شركات الأدوية تصنع وتسوق المنتجات العشبية. في ليبيا، ممارسة طب الأعشاب توسعت ولكن بدون تطور موازي في المعايير الوطنية وطرق التقييم الملائمة، ولهذا من الأهمية التأكيد على أنه لم تكن هناك دراسات طويلة المدى على مراقبة الجودة، ومراقبة التسويق وتنظيم التحضيرات العشبية المصنعة والمستوردة إلى حد كبير،حيث أنه لا توجد حتى الآن جهة مسئولة لمتابعة التصنيع الجيد وتوحيد معايير التحضير العشبي للحصول على منتجات ذات جودة عالية. ولهذا كان الهدف الرئيسي من هذه الدراسة الحالية تركيز الأضواء على هذه المشكلة بالتقييم ومراقبة الجودة لخمسة أدوية عشبية مختارة من السوق الليبي. بدأ التقييم لهذه المنتجات بفحص تعريف المنتج، تقييم لحجم الجزيئات وانتشارها، التقييم المجهري فحص الخواص الفيزيائية، تقييم لمحتوى الرطوبة، قيمة الرماد، دراسة للخواص الكيميائية والفحص الكروماتوغرافي لإثبات الجودة وتبيان ما إذا كانت مغشوشة أم لا . ومرت المنتجات بفحوصات أعقد مثل فحص التلوث الميكروبي، والكشف عن المواد الغريبة، السموم الفطرية الأفلاتوكسينات المعادن الثقيلةِ بقايا المبيدات الحشرية والكشف النوعي للنشاط الإشعاعي لضمان سلامتها. أشارت النتائج إلى أن كل الأدوية العشبية غير صالحة للتداوي بها فهي تُجمع وتُجَهز بدون طرق علمية حيث أن بعضها تجاوزت العدد القانوني للنباتات المسموح بها في كل منتج بالإضافة لعدم إدراج كم وحدة لكل نبات في الخلطة، وعدم ذكر التأثيرات الجانبية لها. علاوة على ذلك وجدت ثلاث منتجات لا تحتوي على أرقام التسجيل، ولهذا معظمها لم تستوفِ المتطلبات الأساسية للجودة والأمان، حيث تجاوز البعض الحد المسموح به في قيم الرماد، وثلاثة منها تحتوي على نشاط إشعاعي بعد الفحص النوعي لها.

Abstract

: Herbs which have always been the principal form of traditional medicine in the old societies around the world, have again become popular not only in the developing countries, but also in the developed world, where people strive to stay healthy in the face of illness with natural medicines that work in concert with the body defenses. Increasingly too, scientific evidence are accumulating to show that herbal medicine can provide treatment that is effective as conventional medicine but with few side effects. Therefore, sales of herbal remedies have grown dramatically and several mainstream pharmaceutical firms now manufacture and market the herbal products. In Libya the practice of herbal medicine was developed but without parallel development in the national standards and appropriate evaluation methods so it is important to emphasize that there have been no long-term studies of the quality control, marketing monitor, that highly regulate the imported and manufactured of herbal remedies. There are no regional organized mechanisms for good manufacturing practices (GMP) and standardization of good herbal preparation. Thus the main target of presented study is to focus on this problem by conducting evaluating and conducting quality control for five selected herbal remedies sold in the Libyan market. Starting with labeling estimation, evaluation of particle size distribution, microscopic evaluation, organoleptic evaluation, moisture content, ash valuesphytochemical screening and chromatographic screening for adulteration to prove their quality. While more complicated determinations as; microbial and foreign materials detection, such as aflatoxins, pesticide residues, heavy metals, and radio activity were performed as well to prove safety. The results indicated that all the selected herbal remedies do not comply with the pharmacopoeias standard. They are exceeding the legal number of plants and their labels are not listing how many units of each plant in the products and neither any adverse effect was mentioned. Moreover three of the samples did not contain batch numbers, while most of them did not fulfilling the basic requirements for the quality and safety. They exceed the allowed ash values and three of them contained radioactivity after qualitative determination.
رجب عبد السلام التريكي (2009)

ABSTRACT Pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima D.) is an angiosperm belonging to the Cucurbitaceae family generally characterized by climbing herbaceous vine with tendrils. The fruits vary in size, colour, shape and weight and have a moderately hard rind, with a thick edible flesh, and numerous seeds in the fruit which are either plump and tan or soft white.Preliminary phytochemical evaluation on different extracts of seed and fruit of C.maxima reveals the presence of proteins, carbohydrates, flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids, steroids, coumerins, phenolic compounds, terpenoids, and glycosides. A C.maximum contains antioxidants (such as: tocopherols, flavonoids, and phenolic acids, carotenoids or ascorbic acid) which are molecule that are capable of slowing or preventing the oxidation of other molecules. They may protect cells from damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals. Antioxidants terminate these chain reactions by removing free radical intermediates, and inhibit other oxidation reactions by being oxidized themselves.Free radical scavenging or antioxidant activity of the extract was determined on the basis of their scavenging activity of the stable 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical. Antibacterial activity of the crude extract was determined by Cup-cut agar diffusion method.The pulp and seed extracts showed significant antioxidant activity in a dose-dependent manner with good IC50 values. For the pulp IC50(s) were 4.25 ± 0.05, 3.84 ± 1.18 and 4.12 ± 0.32 for petroleum ether, chloroform and Methanol extracts, respectively. In addition the the seed IC50(s) were 9.22 ± 0.20, 14.5 ± 0.14 and 5.97 ± 1.70 for petroleum ether, chloroform and Methanol extracts, respectively. C.maxima extracts contains antioxidants that prevent the oxidative damage to DNA in presence of DNA damaging agent (Sybr Gold) at a high concentration. The percentage of hydroxyl radical scavenging activity of C. maxima determines the ability of antioxidant to scavenge the hydroxyl radicals. The antioxidant activity of C. maxima extracts has high scavenging activity (thermodynamic property) and relatively high reaction rate (kinetic property); therefore, the second order rate constant (ks) of the H-atom transfer from antioxidant to the hydroxyl radical was seen. The seed extract showed antibacterial properties on both Gram- positive and Gram-negative bacteria used in this study. This means that C. maxima are useful as potential antibacterial agents. It was also observed from this study, the variations in the antibacterial activities of the C. maxima may be due to the differences in their bioactive compositions or concentrations. In conclusion, the physicochemical and preliminary phytochemical evaluation of fruit and seeds of C.maxima provide valuable information regarding their identification, authentication and chemical constituents which may be useful for the standardization and preparation of medicinal plants. The constituents of fruit and seeds of C. maxima may have several medicinal properties and can be utilized for the treatment of various diseases. Further research on this species in Libya may help in the isolation of therapeutically potent compounds which can be finally be subjected to pharmacological activities, thus leading to opening up new avenues in the use of natural products for therapeutic purpose.
إيناس عبدالله السعداوي (2016)

Abstract

The objective of the study is to find a substitute for corn starch and find various options for pharmaceutical industry.Three types of grains were used which were “Hordeum vulgare “Barlay., Orchis mascula” Salep” pannistum americanum “ Pearl millet” starch was extracted from the grains and their disintegration time was measured.Physiochemical screening were used for determining the total value, moisture, protein, fat, fiber, pH, melting point, loss on drying, optical rotation, I.R, solubility, organoleptic evaluation, microbial contamination, swelling index, content of .rbohydrate.Pharmaceutical evaluation was used for determine bulk density, tapped density, average diameter and particle size distribution, starch powder flow properties “angle repose, Hausner’s ratio and cars index. The powder was transformed into granules with the usage of super disintegrant (poly vinyl pyrolidin P.V.P) for many concentrations, the pharmaceutical evaluations above-mentioned were used to measure the disintegration time, and the best result was 7.5% of (P.V.P), this concentration was used in the other formulas. The objective of the study is to find a substitute for corn starch and find various options for pharmaceutical industry. Three types of grains were used which were “Hordeum vulgare “Barlay., Orchis mascula” Salep” pannistum americanum “ Pearl millet” starch was extracted from the grains and their disintegration time was measured.Physiochemical screening were used for determining the total value, moisture, protein, fat, fiber, pH, melting point, loss on drying, optical rotation, I.R, solubility, organoleptic evaluation, microbial contamination, swelling index, content of carbohydrate.Pharmaceutical evaluation was used for determine bulk density, tapped density, average diameter and particle size distribution, starch powder flow properties “angle repose, Hausner’s ratio and cars index.The powder was transformed into granules with the usage of super disintegrant (poly vinyl pyrolidin P.V.P) for many concentrations, the pharmaceutical evaluations above-mentioned were used to measure the disintegration time, and the best result was 7.5% of (P.V.P), this concentration was used in the other formulas. The granules were pressed into tablets by the usage of Apress of 15KN in order to determine the disintegration time. The granules were prepared by wet and dry granulation techniques. The concentrations of the starch were (3%, 9%). Then they were evaluated by pharmaceutical evaluations previously mentioned.The granule was transformed into tablets weight variation, thickness, hardness and disintegration times were determined. From the study results, we noticed that the results of the physiochemical screening are similar to the parameters of Syrian Arab Organization and Metrology. The results revealed the contamination of the starch because of its hygroscopic nature.The results of the wet granulation method was better than dry granulation method and the results of pharmaceutical evaluation were acceptable.The sample with the largest particle size the shortest disintegration time, decrease the concentration of starch lead to rapid penetration of water and an increase in disintegration time.The result of dissolution test was good within the limit of British pharmacopeia
بثينة يوسف مهنى (2016)