Evaluation of in vitro antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of polyherbal formulation of Thirikadugu chooranam and Parangipattai chooranam
P.P. Sethumathi, K. Manjuparkavi, V. Lalitha, T. Sivakumar, M Menaka, A. Jayanthi, B. Ashok Kumar
Abstract
Traditional systems of medicine are widely practiced in many countries. For a wide variety of human ailments, plant materials are being emphasized to be used as a source of medicine because of the following reasons, population rise, poor supply of drugs, expenditure of treatments, adverse effects of severa l synthetic drugs and increase resistance to infectious organisms for presently used drugs. Therefore, the current study highlights the organoleptic characters, phytochemical analysis, radical scavenger (antioxidant) activity and antimicrobial properties of two polyherbal formulations, Thirikadugu Chooranam (TC) made of dry ginger (Zingiber officinalae), black pepper (Piper nigrum), long pepper (Piper longum) and Parangipattai Chooranam (PC) made of Parangipattai (Smilax chinensis) and Karunthulasi (Ocimum tenuiflorum). The antibacterial activity against the gram-positive, gram-negative bacteria and antifungal activity of both the herbal formulations were determined. Radical scavenging activities of TC and PC were determined by various methods. TC showed good radical scavenging activity than PC, whereas, PC showed significant antibacterial activity than TC. Phenols and its derivatives might be responsible for high antioxidant property in TC Presence of various secondary phytoconstituents in PC could be the reason for eliminating bacteria and fungi.