Abstract

The wound healing process is a complex and dynamic process of restoring cellular structures and tissue layers upon damage. Pupallia lappacea (L.) Juss is an annual or perennial herb of the family Amaranthaceae widespread in the tropics and sub-tropical regions and used in folklore medicine for treatment of boils, chronic wounds and skin infections. The study aims to determine the antioxidant and in vivo wound healing properties of P. lappacea. Extracts of leaves and aerial parts of P. lappacea were obtained by extracting with ethanol, petroleum ether and chloroform using the cold maceration method for 72 h. The antioxidant properties of the extracts were determined by the DPPH free radical scavenging method and the IC₅₀ determined. The wound healing studies was conducted using excision wound healing model using Sprague-Dawley rats and the percentage wound closure determined for 11 days. Histological studies of wound tissues revealed appreciable collagenation, re-epithelialisation, granular tissue formation and angiogenesis for wounds treated with 2 and 10% w/w ethanol leaf extract creams as well as 1% chloroform extract creams to compared untreated wound tissues. All the extracts exhibited some level of antioxidant activity with IC₅₀ values of 9.67, 17.37 and 63.27 µg/mL for the chloroform, ethanol and petroleum ether extracts, respectively. The ethanol and chloroform extracts also exhibited high rate of wound closure with 33.60% ± 2.29 to 67.23% ± 1.90 (p ≤ 0.001) and 35.65% ± 2.30 to 67.68% ± 1.62 (p ≤ 0.001), respectively from the 7th day post wounding to the 11th day as compared to the untreated wounds.

Key words: Excision wound model, antioxidant, wound contraction, histological studies.