Abstract
Anastatica hierochuntica L. is distributed throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa. It is locally called Maryam. All parts of the plant are used in folk medicine. This study aimed to investigate possible antioxidant activity of various extracts of Kaff Mariam, anti-inflammatory activities, as well as in vitro cytotoxic activities. Five extract types were used, namely, the whole ethanolic extracts, ethyl acetate, petroleum ether, water, and butanol extracts. The explored items included determination of total phenolics using the Folin-Ciocalteu assay and total flavonoids using Muller’s method, anti-oxidant activity using three assays (2, 2'-Azinobis [3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid]-diammonium salt (ABTS), reducing power, and 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)), membrane stabilization test for anti-inflammatory studies, as well as in vitro cytotoxic activities against HeLa cell lines using the 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiozol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The results obtained indicated high flavonoid and phenolic contents in all the five extracts types. All extracts registered high antioxidant activity using three assays, but generally, the ABTS assay recorded the highest antioxidant activity as compared to the reducing power and DPPH methods. The membrane stabilization test showed that extracts of Kaff Maryam had good anti-inflammatory activity. Extracts of Kaff Maryam also registered very good cytotoxic activities against HeLa cell lines. Kaff Maryam extracts have good antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and cytotoxic activities and the results of this study provide the basis for further investigation of Kaff Maryam for potential identification of novel bioactive compounds with therapeutic properties. Key words: Anastatica hierochuntica, Kaff Maryam, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, HeLa cell lines, cytotoxicity.
Highlights
IntroductionHerbal drugs and traditional remedies are relatively more popular, because of cultural acceptability and belief that being natural, they are safe and non-toxic
There is a global increase in the use of medicinal plants for health reasons
It was noted that the highest content was registered in the whole extract at 3100 ferruleic acid equivalents (FAE), while the lowest was in the water extract at 160 FAE
Summary
Herbal drugs and traditional remedies are relatively more popular, because of cultural acceptability and belief that being natural, they are safe and non-toxic. Importance of natural products in drug discovery and development (Gavamukulya et al, 2015; Heinrich and Bremner, 2006; Thirumal et al, 2012). Many synthetic drugs cause severe side effects that are not acceptable except as treatments of last resort for terminal diseases, such as cancer and the metabolites discovered in medicinal plants may avoid the side effect of synthetic drugs (Valko et al, 2007), because ideally, toxicity of such drugs is yet not well understood (Barnes et al, 2007; Salah et al, 2011). The medicinal values of these plants lie in their phytochemical components which produce definite physiological actions on the human body. The most important of these components are alkaloids, tannins, flavonoid and phenolic compounds (Nakashima et al, 2010)
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