Abstract
Background: Western Ghats are one of the hot spots of biodiversity and rich with medicinal plants. Plants are traditionally used in different tribal medicinal practices in different parts of Southern India. The medicinal plant Fagraea ceylanica were collected from Western Ghats based on tribal traditional knowledge.
Methods: Aqueous (Aqet) and methanolic (Meot) extracts were prepared from fruits and leaves of the F. ceylanica plant. Furthermore, extracts were analyzed for bioactive compounds and found that methanolic extracts of leaves were rich with phenols, flavonoids, tannins and Vitamin C. In addition, in-vitro antioxidant analyses were performed by using different systems likes, Total antioxidant, DPPH scavenging, reducing power, ferrous ion reducing, and lipid peroxidation inhibition assays.
Results: Methanolic extracts (Meot) of leaves had shown significantly high bioactive compounds, correspondingly high antioxidant activities (p<0.05). At the maximum concentration of 1 mg/ml 73.6% of scavenging activity was observed for Meot of leaves. On the other hand, maximum of 76.4% of ferrous chelation and 46.8% hydrogen peroxides inhibition activities were also recorded. The total antioxidant activities were in the range of 213.6-423.9 µMEqs of ascorbic acid/g. The reducing power activities were increased according with concentration and followed similar trend with standard. The EC50 value of methanolic extract was significantly high compared to aqueous (p<0.01) and less than ascorbic acid.
Conclusion: The results from these in vitro phytochemical and antioxidant activity analysis, demonstrated that bioactive compounds in medicinal plants Fagraea ceylanica might play an important role in ROS scavenging against oxidative stress and in protecting living organisms from damaging. Hence, this medicinal plant could be used as an easy accessible alternate source of natural antioxidants in development of new pharmacological agents. In addition to this, future work should be concentrated on Fagraea to isolate, purify and identify the specific compounds responsible for antioxidant activity.
Keywords: Antioxidant activities, bioactive compounds, EC50, medicinal plant, Western Ghats, Fagraea ceylanica.
Graphical Abstract
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