Efficacy of Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica) Leaves as an Alternative Ointment

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

People nowadays are prone to having injuries. They can easily get it just by being clumsy, doing work, and performing daily tasks. To accelerate the healing process of wounds, medical professionals and common individuals use different kinds of medicine in the form of ointments, cream, gel, anti-infection, and anti-bacterial solutions. According to Cohen (2017), gotu kola (Centella asiatica) has many benefits especially in the medical field. It possesses different uses, particularly in healing wounds, yet there are no scientific researches that provide evidence that gotu kola obtains healing properties. Thus, this study aimed to fill in the gap by producing an alternative ointment from gotu kola that is an effective wound remedy.

METHODS

This study used a quantitative type of research; specifically, an experimental research design which involved the manipulation of the gotu kola ointment by assigning different concentrations of gotu kola such as 25%, 50%, and 75% of gotu kola content. Controlled treatment is the base ointment without gotu kola extract. These different concentrations of ointment were used to treat wounds in the laboratory mouse, while three parameters such as the wound size,wound edges, and epithelialization was assessed using the BWAT (Bates -Jensen Wound Assessment Tool) in this study.

RESULTS

In assessing the most effective amount of gotu kola in an ointment as wound remedy in terms of size, edges, and epithelialization, T3, which is the 75% gotu kola concentration, has a weighted mean of 1.67 which was rated as exceptional. Based on the 5-point Likert scale, the ointment with the lowest weighted mean has the most effective concentration of gotu kola. Thus, the gotu kola ointment with the most effective concentration is the ointment with 75% gotu kola extract (T3).

Testing for the difference of the efficacy of different concentrations of gotu kola ointment in terms of wound size, edges, and epithelialization using the one-way ANOVA test, a P-value of 0.0000357 was obtained which means that there is a significant difference on the efficacy of different concentrations of gotu kola ointment.

DISCUSSIONS

Hence, this study found out that the most effective gotu kola ointment has 75% gotu kola content compared to the other treatments. Therefore, the researchers concluded that it is exceptional which means it significantly and consistently exceeds the expected performance level. Thus, this study proved that gotu kola (Centella asiatica) leaves are effective in wound healing.