Effect of neem (Azadirachta indicia A. Juss.) leaf extracts in human T lymphocytes

Nowadays some countries provide universal access for the anti-retro-viral therapy for people living with HIV; however, this population for several reasons, only takes traditional and complementary medicine or use it to complement their conventional treatment in order to keep and improve their health, and among the popular herbal remedies used by people living with HIV are neem leaf extracts. So that, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of aqueous and ethanolic neem leaf extracts in human T lymphocytes. For the concentration of 1 mu L of aqueous extract a cellular viability of 100% was observed, for the concentration of 10 mu L of the aqueous extract a massive proliferative effect was observed of 417.89%, and for the concentration of 100 mu L of aqueous extract was observed a cellular viability of 26.39%. In the case of the ethanolic extracts, they showed to be cytotoxic since the concentrations of 1 mu L, 10 mu L and 100 mu L reduced the cellular viability to 67.17%, 51.65% and 10.22%, respectively. All the experiments were compared with the control. Due to the fact that some vegetable polymeric proteins, known as lectins such as concanavalin A and phytohaemagglutinin are polyclonal activators, also considered as mitogens due to the fact that they encourage T lymphocytes to commence cell division; we think the mitogenic effect-like that we observed in our aqueous extract may be as a consequence of the presence of lectins in it.