Pharmacophore an International Research Journal
Cardiovascular diseases are leading cause of death and there is need for development of new therapeutics. Plant based therapeutics play an important role in the management of cardiovascular disease and considering this, the present study was designed to evaluate the antioxidant, hypolipidemic and anti-obesity effect of extracts of Momordica dioica Roxb. fruits (MDR). The crude methanolic extract (MEMD) was prepared by soxhlet extraction and fractionated into petroleum ether, chloroform (NFEMD) and ethyl acetate (FFMD). The marc was macerated with chloroform water to yield the aqueous extract (AEMD). All extracts were evaluated for their in vitro antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities and among the extracts; MEMD & FFMD have shown best antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities. MEMD and FFMD having best activities owing to their high phenolic and flavonoid content were selected for in-vivo studies on atherogenic diet (AD) induced hyperlipidemic rats. Atherogenic diet alone treated animals have developed hyperlipidemia and obesity when compared with normal animals. Whereas MEMD and FFMD significantly (p≤0.05) reduced the elevated levels of total cholesterol (TC), serum triglyceride (TG), LDL-cholesterol and VLDL- cholesterol, AST and ALT and elevate the decreased level of HDL-cholesterol. Other observations shows that rats treated with MEMD & FFMD underwent a time-dependent reduction in body weight, organ weight and increase in locomotors activity. These results suggest that, MDR extracts possess good hypolipidemic and anti-obesity activity, which may be due to its antioxidant and free radical scavenging potential. MEMD has more potential than FFMD because of high phenolic and flavonoid content.
