Antioxidant and Type II Diabetes-related Enzyme Inhibition Properties of Few Selected Medicinal Plants

The WHO recognizes the importance of medicinal plants in today’s day and age mainly due to the increasing amount of disorders and diseases. Diabetes mellitus is a disorder which is a great cause of concern in the 21 st century and has reached a state of pestilence in the present century. The modern oral hypoglycemic agents produce undesirable side effects and oxidative stress and thus there is a need for cost effective and complementary therapies to deal with diabetes mellitus. The aim of this paper is to thus evaluate few selected medicinal plants for their in vitro antioxidant activities and inhibitory potential against key enzymes relevant to hyperglycemia. Total phenolic content, DPPH free radical scavenging activity and alpha amylae inhibitory potential was determined for three selected medicinal plants – Andrographis paniculata, Apium graveolans, Butea monosperma, The total phenolic content was in the range 3-9 mg GAE/g plant material and the highest was observed in Butea monosperma. All the three plants showed anti oxidant activities with their IC 50 values ranging between 14-20 µg/ml compared to IC 50 value of the standard L-Ascorbic acid, which was 11.59µg/ ml. The extracts of Apium graveolans and Butea monosperma showed ±- amylase inhibition. Butea monosperma showed the highest inhibition (95%). Thus the results provided evidence that the studied plants are potential sources of natural antioxidant and antidiabetic agents.