Couepia grandiflora Benth., known popularly as ema fruit, belongs to the family Chrysobalanaceae, and is distributed in tropical and subtropical areas. Plants of this family are used mainly for the treatrnent of the diarrhea. dysentery and malaria. In this work, it was evaluated the cytotoxic, antibacterial, antifungal and antioxidant activíties of the hexane and ethanolic extracts from C. grandiflora. The cytotoxic activíty of the hexane and ethanolic extracts showed a LC50 of 0.1082 mg/mL and 0.1408 mg/mL, respectively. The ethanolic extract of C. grandiflora showed antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. while the hexane extract showed activity just against P. aeruginosa. The two extracts did not show activity against Escherichia coli. The Minímum Inhibitory Concentrations (MIC) of the ethanolic extract were 188, 125 and 188 μL/mL for Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, respectively. The evaluation of the antioxidant activity of the hexane and ethanolic extracts showed good results when compared to the reference drugs(EC50=3.1 and 5.6 mg/mL, respectively). It was not detected antifungal activity for hexane and ethanolic extracts from C. grandiflora.
Couepia grandiflora; Chrysobalanaceae; cytotoxicity; antifungal; antifungal; antibacterial; antioxidant