ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of time, people have employed natural remedies made from plants, animals, microbes, and marine organisms to treat and prevent disease. Traditional or herbal medicine is the sum total of knowledge or practices, whether explicable or inexplicable, used in diagnosing, preventing, or eliminating a physical, mental, or social disease, and may rely solely on past experience or observation passed down verbally or in writing from generation to generation. Traditional or Herbal medicine is beginning to gain relevance due to the high cost, bureaucracy inaccessibility of orthodox medicine especially in rural areas of developing countries. The Anthocleista species are trees and shrub-like plants that are currently members of the Gentianaceae family. Six of the 14 species have reportedly been used extensively in traditional medicine to cure a variety of illnesses such as diabetes, syphilis, malaria, typhoid, and hypertension. A. grandiflora, a tall tree that thrives in swampy environments, heavily forested streams, and tropical regions of East and South Africa has been reported in literature to have antimalarial properties as well as haematological significance. This study was aimed at finding the effects of methanol leaf extract of the plant on the body weight, reproductive and lipid profile as well as Histopathological indices of wister rats. 40 wsiter rats comprising of 20 male and 20 female were used in the study broken into group of eight (5 replicate each). Methanol leaf extract were administered orally at 200 mg/kg, 400 mg/kg and 800 mg/kg doses for 28 days but control were given just water. The results were analysed using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Duncan‘s multiple mean comparisons and showed no significant difference in body weight for both male and female rats when compared with the control but showed significant difference in reproductive assays, lipid profile and Histopathological indices as the effects of the plant on these indices were observed to be concentration dependent.
