Antioxidant, acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity, and cytotoxicity assessment of the crude extracts of Boophane disticha

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and is characterized by memory impairment, cognitive dysfunction, behavioral disturbances, and deficits in daily living (Konrath et al, 2012). Approaches to enhance cholinergic function in AD have included stimulating cholinergic receptors or prolonging the availability of acetylcholine (ACh) released into the synaptic cleft by inhibiting ACh hydrolysis with acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors (Howes and Houghton, 2003). Tacrine was the first widely used AChE inhibitor (Summers, 2006). Second-generation AChE inhibitors with longer half-lives than tacrine, such as donepezil, galanthamine, and rivastigmine, have since been developed and are currently in use (Shah et al, 2008). In addition, several lines of evidence indicate that reactive oxygen species are associated with the pathogenesis of AD, as some cellular characteristics of this disease are either causes or effects of oxidative stress (Zhu et al., 2004; Sultana et al., 2006; Konrath et al., 2012).