Phytochemical and pharmacological activities of methanol extract of Artemisia vulgaris L. leaves

Artemisia vulgaris commonly known as “mugwort” is a very important medicinal plant which is used widely for the treatment of various ailments traditionally. The present studies aimed to conduct preliminary phytochemical screening and evaluate antioxidants and analgesic activities of leaves extract. Phytochemical screening showed the presence of saponins, glycosides, flavanoids, protein, triterpenoids in leaves extract. In DPPH, percentage inhibition of the scavenging activity (68.06%) by the extract in comparison with ascorbic acid (93.53%) at 60 μg/ml while in reducing power assay, the result shown the reducing power increases with the increase of concentration as (0.13 ± 0.02), (0.27 ± 0.03), (0.42 ± 0.03), (0.62 ± 0.05), (0.79 ± 0.02), (0.95 ± 0.05) at concentration of 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 and 100 μg/ml respectively. The evaluation of analgesic activities revealed that at the dose of 200 and 400 mg/kg of the extract showed significantly inhibited the writhing response induced by acetic acid by 8.60% and 32.03% comparatively with indomethacin at a dose of 10 mg/kg b. wt. exhibited 56.87% inhibition. Whereas, in the tail immersion methods, at the dose of 400 mg/kg b. wt. was showed higher deflexion value as 3.40 ± 0.300, while 200 mg/kg b. wt. was resulted at 2.90 ± 0.200 value in dose dependent manner at the maximum time of the studies (60 min). Comparatively, the reference drug indomethacin at dose 10 mg/kg b. wt. has shown the highest deflexion value (5.134 ± 0.351). This finding concludes that the methanolic leaves extract has a potent antioxidants and analgesic activities and it could be attributed to the presence of flavonoids, triterpenoids, saponin, glycosides and proteins. A further study is required to find out the novel bioactive compound of Artemisia vulgaris L. which can lead more effective in various biological activities.