The plant material was collected in the Tirunelveli district, Tamilnadu, India. It was authenticated by Dr.V.Chelladurai, Govt. Research officer, Botany C.C.R.A.S. Govt. of India, (Retired), Tirunelveli. A voucher specimen has been kept in our laboratory for future reference

Aristolochia bracteata was collected dried under shade, coarsely powdered and passed through sieve no.22 to get particle of uniform size. Then extracted exhaustively with Pet. Ether and Acetone using Soxhlet apparatus5 . The solvent was removed under reduced pressure to obtain a solid mass. It was then preserved in a desiccators until further use.

Male Wister Albino rats (100-150gm) were procured form animal house of our institute, maintained under room temperature (20±10C) and relative humidity 55±10Cwith 12 h light / dark cycle. The animals were provided with standard pellet diet (M/s Hindustan Lever Ltd, Mumbai, India.) with free access to water adlibidum. The present study was approved by institutional animal ethics committee (Approval no. 509/02/C/CPCSEA).

The antipyretic activity of Pet.etheric and Acetone extracts were screened by using yeast-induced hyperpyrexia method6,7. The selected animals were divided into four groups, each having six animals. They were maintained at constant temperature of 24-25° for 24 h before pyrexia was induced by subcutaneous injection of 1 ml of 15% brewer’s yeast suspension in saline solution10. After 18 h of yeast injection, the extracts at a dose of 250 mg/kg were administered orally to each group as a suspension in tween 80. Paracetamol i.p. (200 mg/kg) was used as standard for comparison of antipyretic activity, and all control animals received tween 80. Rectal temperatures were noted at 60 min intervals.

Figure 1

Values are reported as Mean ± S.E.M, n= 6, *P<0.05 (Compared to control) were considered significant

The statistical analysis were carried out by student ‘t’ test, P> 0.05 was considered significant. All the values are reported as Mean±SEM.