Anti-diabetic potential of water-soluble polysaccharide from okra pods mucilage diabetes

Abstract

Plant derived mucilage, due its role in promoting human health, has been extensively used as active constituent for the preparation of different pharmaceuticals, functional and nutraceutical products. Mucilage mainly consists of complex carbohydrates with extremely branched structure. Abelmoschus esculentus L. (Moench), belongs to family Malvaceae, is an annual herb commonly known as okra. The purpose of this study was the identification of bioactive polysaccharides present in the mucilage of okra pods and evaluation of their biological activities. Mucilage was extracted by soaking okra pods in water. The dried mucilage was fractionated in 75% ethanol, which resulted in soluble and insoluble fractions. Each fraction was screened which confirmed the presence of galacturonic acid, saturated and unsaturated polysaccharides. Crude, soluble and insoluble fractions were processed for investigating their biological activities. The results indicated that insoluble fraction was able to inhibit the growth of five human pathogenic bacterial strains i.e. Staphylococcus aureus (1.9 mm ± 0.27mm), Escherichia coli (2.8mm ± 0.44mm) and Shigella (2.9mm ± 0.85mm). However, no significant inhibition was observed against Klebsiella pneumonia and Salmonella typhi. Antioxidant capacity was determined through DPPH assay where the soluble fraction showed IC50 value 785.5 μg/mL while the insoluble fraction showed IC50 value 987.21 μg/mL.