Determination of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, as well as in vitro cytotoxic activities of extracts of Anastatica hierochuntica (Kaff Maryam) against HeLa cell lines

Abstract

Anastatica hierochuntica L. is distributed throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa. It is locally called "Kaff 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. INTRODUCTIONThere is a global increase in the use of medicinal plants for health reasons. In developing countries, herbal drugs and traditional remedies are relatively more popular, because of cultural acceptability and belief that being natural, they are safe and non-toxic. Although, there are some new approaches to drug discovery, such as combinatorial chemistry and computer based molecular modeling design, none of them can replace the 78 J. Med. Plants Res.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, flavono...

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“…In the current study, based on their various pharmacological applications, Anastatica hierochuntica and Artemisia absinthium have been used for AgNP fabrication. A. hierochuntica extracts showed antimicrobial, antifungal, antioxidant, hypolipidemic, and hypoglycemic effects (Rahmy and El-Ridi, 2002;Tayel and El-Tras, 2009;Mohamed et al, 2010;Al Gamdi et al, 2011;Salah et al, 2011;Daoowd, 2013;Abou-Elella et al, 2016). A. absinthium, which is as the main component in the infamous Absinthe drink, has been known for its medicinal benefits since the time of the ancient Greeks and in traditional medicine of western Europe.…”

Identification of Anastatica hierochuntica L. Methanolic Leaves Extract-Derived Metabolites Exhibiting Xanthine Oxidase Inhibitory Activities: In Vitro and in Silico Approaches

“…The ProTox-II cytotoxicity model classifies compounds as cytotoxic if their IC50 values are ≤10 µM in the in vitro toxicity assay using HepG2 cells [50], which could be the reason for the positive score obtained against naringenin only. Nevertheless, numerous studies have documented the antiproliferative potential of plant extracts against various cancer cell lines, including HeLa [51], AMN-3 [52], and MCF-7 [53,54], indicating their promising cytotoxicity against cancer cells. Roughly, about 30% of the phytoconstituents were found to be mutagenic, which was contrary to the in vivo results of the plant extracts tested by in vivo mammalian erythrocyte micronucleus assays demonstrating no significant mutagenicity in Sprague Dawley rats [55].…”

Evaluation of Selected Nigerian Medicinal Plants for Antioxidant, Antimicrobial and Cytotoxic activities

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