Ethnomedical survey of plants used for the treatment of tuberculosis in North Eastern Nigeria was undertaken primarily for the purpose of documentation and screening for possible drug leads. The leaves of Sterculia setigera has been implicated in the folkloric treatment of Tuberculosis by the Fulani people of Bauchi state, Nigeria. Preliminary phytochemical screening of the leaves of S. setigera (sterculiaceae) revealed the presence of steroids, terpenoids, tannins, fatty acids and cardiac glycosides, alkaloids and flavonoids were not detected. In this work, the pulverized leaves of S. setigera was defatted in cold maceration with hexane and then exhaustively extracted with dichloromethane. The Dichloromethane soluble extract was subjected to normal Phase column chromatography (NPCC) using gradient elution. Further purification led to isolation of colourless, shiny needle-like crystals which was subjected to physical, chemical and spectroscopic analyses using IR, ‘H-NMR, 13C-NMR and GC-MS. The compound was confirmed to be Stigmast-5-en-3β-ol (β-sitosterol) (1), a known sterol hitherto unreported in S. stigera leaves.
