Aedes aegypti is the primary vector of chikungunya, yellow and dengue fevers. Dengue fever is the major cause of child morbidity and hospitalisation in some Asian and African countries, while yellow fever is prevalent in Nigeria. The development of resistance to the available insecticides has necessitated the continued search for safer ones from plants. Eighteen plant extracts with ethnomedical...

About three quarters of the world population rely mainly on plants and plant extracts for health care. The global annual sale of botanicals is over $ 62 billion. This data clearly depict the importance of medicinal plants in health and economy. The extracts of some potential medicinal plants such as Hygrophila auriculata, Abrus precatorius, Moringa oleifera, Withania somnifera, Croton tiglium, ...

common plants in every part of India, and describes its botanical characters as follows. ''Flowering time at the close of the rains. Root ramous: stem ligneous, twining ; baric smooth ; young shoots with a few white depressed hairs. Leaves alternate, abruptly pinnate, from two to six inches long. Leaflets opposite, subsessile, from eight to fifteen pair, linear, oblong, smooth, entire, both end...

Ayurveda, which is one of the traditional systems of medicine of India, reports the seeds of Abrus precatorius (family: Fabaceae) can be used therapeutically after shodhana process, which removes the toxin. The main objective was to scientifically study the shodhana process by evaluating the safety and efficacy of A. precatorius seeds. Aqueous extract (A1) and detoxified extract (A2) of the see...

Essential oils from plants have been proven safe as natural antioxidants, and few are already marketed as digestive enhancers as well as in prevention of several degenerative diseases. This study evaluated the antioxidant capacity of seed and shell essential oils of Abrus precatorius (L), a herb used for ethno-medicinal practices in Nigeria. The essential oils were obtained by hydro-distillatio...

The agglutinins present in the seeds of Abrus precatorius and Ricinus communis have been separated from the toxins, abrin and ricin, and extensively purified. The procedure involves ion exchange chromatography on DEAEand CMcellulose columns, affinity chromatography on Sepharose 4B columns, and sucrose gradient centrifugation. The purified agglutinins which possessed almost no toxic activity wer...

The galactose-binding lectin from the seeds of the jequirity plant (Abrus precatorius) was subjected to various chemical modifications in order to detect the amino acid residues involved in its binding activity. Modification of lysine, tyrosine, arginine, histidine, glutamic acid and aspartic acid residues did not affect the carbohydrate-binding activity of the agglutinin. However, modification...