Preliminary sceening of Anti inflammatory and Antioxidant activity of Morinda umbellata

Abstract

The presesent work was undertaken to evaluate the preliminary phytochemical, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity of Morinda umbellata. Bovine serum albumin denaturation inhibition assay was used for the evaluation of in-vitro anti-inflammatory activity and DPPH Free radical scavenging and super oxide scavenging assays were used to assess the antioxidant activity of ethanol and aqueous extracts of the whole plant of Morinda umbellata. In anti-denaturation study it was observed that aqueous extract showed greater percentage of inhibition of bovine serum albumin denaturation i.e. 44.8% whereas ethanol extract showed 35.4% at the 400µg/ml concentration respectively. In case of antioxidant screening also, aqueous extract showed better antioxidant power compared to ethanol extract dose dependently. Among the two extracts evaluated for anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities aqueous extract of Morinda umbellata was found to possess significantly good anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities and this can be attributed to the presence of alkaloids, saponins, glycosides, flavonoids and phenolic compounds.