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The Ebola virus disease causing hemorrhagic fever in human, has been known for nearly about 40 years, with the most recent outbreak being in West Africa creating humanitarian crisis, where over 11,308 deaths were recorded as reported in 30th March, 2016 (World Health Organization). Till now, Ebola virus drugs have been far from achieving regulatory FDA approval, and coupled with toxicity of these drugs, it is become imperative to appraise the available trail drugs, as well as looking into alternative natural resources of tackling menace. Therefore, in silico methods were used to assess the potency of the bioactive phytochemical, Curcumin from Turmeric and results compared with those obtained for some selected trial drugs in use for the treatment of Ebola virus. This study is focused on molecular docking of Curcumin and eight commercially available drugs (Amodiaquine, Apilimod, Azithromycin, Bepridil, Pyronaridine, Remedesivir and Tilorone) against Ebola transcription activator VP30 proteins (PDB: 2I8B, 4Z9P and 5T3T) and their ADMET profiling. The results showed that binding affinity (ΔG kJ/mol) ranged from -5.8 (Tilorone) to -7.3 (Remdesivir) for 218B, -6.4 (Tilorone) to -8.2 (Pyronaridine, Remedesivir) and -5.8 (Bepridil) to -7.4 (Pyronaridine). Curcumin could be more desirable as inhibitor for than Tilorone, Dronedarone and Bepridil in the treatment of Ebola virus; the ADMET profile revealed that Curcumin presents attractive pharmacokinetic properties than the trial drugs.

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Hoslundia opposita Vahl is a multi-purpose medicinal plant used traditionally to treat gonorrhea, cystitis, cough, fever, snake bites, convulsion in many parts of Africa. The objectives of this research are to evaluate the phytochemical profile, antioxidant activity of the leaves of Hoslundia opposita Vahl and to dock its phytochemical components with uropathogenic Escherichia coli strain F11(ID:3NRP) and NFeoB from Escherichia coli BL21(ID:5FH9). Harborne’s method was used for the identification of the class of phytochemicals while GC-MS was used to identify the type of phytochemicals. Folin-Ciocalteau method was used to determine the total phenolic content while aluminum colorimetric assay was used to estimate the total flavonoid content. 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) was used to evaluate the antioxidant activity. The molecular docking simulation method was used to investigate the interactions of the phytochemicals with the Escherichia coli receptors. In the phytochemical studies, flavonoids, terpenoids, cardiac glycosides and saponins were identified to be present in the methanolic leaf extract while steroids, alkaloids and anthraquinones were absent. The GC-MS analysis of the methanolic extract revealed presence of 17 compounds out of which 14 were identified. The compounds with appreciable quantity in the leaf extract were 1, 2, 3-benzetriol (38.11%), n-hexadacanoic acid (13.52%) and catechol (9.98%). Assessment of the antioxidant activity using DPPH gave a scavenging activity of 79.86% at 500ug/ml compared with ascorbic acid having a scavenging activity of 90.85% at the same concentration. Evaluation of the total phenolic and flavonoid contents at 500 ug/ml gave the values of 262.54 mg gallic acid equivalent/g extract and 6.24 mg quercetin equivalent/g extract respectively compared with gallic acid and quercetin with maximum concentrations of 385.12 and 12.46 respectively. This shows that the extract has significant antioxidant activity and can be explored as a valuable source of natural antioxidants. GC-MS analysis of the methanolic extract of Hoslundia opposita showed the presence of trans-3-(trifluoromethyl)cinnamic acid, octadecyl ester which was active against Escherichia coli. Docking results with 3NRP and 5FH9 showed binding affinities of -6.1, -6.6, 7.2and -7.0,7.4, 8.5 kJ/mol with the commercial drugs : ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and tetracycline respectively while that of trans 3-(trifluoromethyl)cinnamic acid, octadecyl ester identified in the leaves were 5.6 and 5.9 kJ/mol.