Potential Anti-inflammatory Properties of Crude Alcoholic Extract of Ocimum basilicum L. in Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Abstract

Ocimum basilicum L. (Lamiaceae) is a wellknown perennial herb in Indian medicine used to treat various disorders like upper respiratory tract infections and wound healing. Primarily we investigated the anti-inflammatory activity of crude extracts of Ocimum basilicum using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of healthy individuals. Ocimum basilicum crude methanolic extract showed a good inhibitory effect on the proliferative response of PBMC in mitogenic lymphocyte proliferation assays. Furthermore, gene expression studies on lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced production of proinflammatory cytokines like Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and IL-2 showed down regulation of the markers. It also suppressed the induction of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and the subsequent production of nitric oxide (NO) in LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 macrophages in a timedependent manner. Our results showed that Ocimum basilicum crude methanolic extract inhibits the key proinflammatory cytokines and mediators, which accounts for its anti-inflammatory effect.

Oviposition deterrent activity of basil plants and their essentials oils against Tuta absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae)

“…Both aromatic species are used as food ingredients and medecinal plants (Selvakkumar et al 2007;Prabhu et al 2009;Bilal et al 2012), so they could be considered harmless to humans. Our results are expected to indicate the potential of Ocimum species as alternative pest biocontrol methods.…”

Role of Ocimum basilicum L. in prevention of ischemia and reperfusion-induced cerebral damage, and motor dysfunctions in mice brain

“…The plant has also shown hypolipidaemic (Amrani et al, 2006), antiinflammatory (Selvakkumar et al, 2007), anti-platelet aggregation, antithrombotic (Singh, 1999), bronchodilatory (Boskabady et al, 2005), antiulcerogenic (Akhtar et al, 1992) and anticarcinogenic (Beric et al, 2008).…”

Immunomodulatory activity of Nerium indicum through inhibition of nitric oxide and cyclooxygenase activity and modulation of TH1/TH2 cytokine balance in murine splenic lymphocytes

“…But in this case, increase in the expression of IL-10 had no suppressive effect on IL-2 or IFN-c expression, even though TNF-a was downregulated. Further, two major promoters of inflammation, TNF-a and NO (Selvakkumar et al 2007) were down-regulated by NILE. Previously, Erdemoglu et al (2003) have demonstrated in vivo anti-inflammatory activity of N. indicum leaf and flower extracts on paw edema model.…”