The ancient Egyptians of 3000-6000 years ago are credited with developing an elaborate and effective pharmacological collection of numerous curing materials obtained from natural resources (Robert 2005). According to the review report the oldest written evidence of medicinal plant usage for the preparation of drugs has been found on a Sumerian clay slab and it consist of drug prepared from 250 plants (Bilana, 2012).
Documented studies states that the ancient doctors of India and Egypt prescribed the plant extracts and essential oils reported as sedatives, analgesic and as remedies for gastrointestinal disorders.
They prescribed them to be taken internally, applied topically and administered by fumigation and vapour inhalation. The Egyptians are also credited with the early medicinal use of wine, castor oil, marijuana, opium, mints and made from barley and wheat (Adovasio and Fry 1976).
General Characteristics of Hedyotis corymbosa
Hedyotis corymbosa is common weed plant and widley distributed in moist habitats of tropical America, Asia, Arabia, Australia, Africa and islands of western pacific. Habitat in grassland with long or short grass, bushland, shallow soil, rocks, sandy river ridges, furrows and dry ponds on black soil, waste places, sandy soil, cultivated lands etc.
Hedyotis corymbosa also known as Oldenlandia corymbosa.
Commonly known as old world diamond flower, wild chayroot, flat top mille grains, daman pappar in hindi, parpata hullu in kanada, parppatakam in malayalam, pitpapda in marati, parpatah in Sanskrit, kattucayaver in tamil and veneela vemu in telugu.
This plant is widley used as medicinal plant in traditional and folk medicine. In Inadia it has been used in treting different diseases like gastric irritability, febrifuge, nervous depression, anthelmintic, liver complients, jaundice, sores in eyes and fever.
In Chinese medicine it is used to treat viral infections, cancer, acne, boils, , hepatitis, eye problems and bleeding. In Africa it is used to to facilitate child birth (Chinelo and Gloria 2016).
Hedyotis corymbosa is a small ever green an erect or prostrate, glaborus, sparsely or diffusely branched annual herb with long stems and rooting at nodes. Leaves are opposite, linear lanceolate. They are sessile, acute at the apex, entire at the margins, smooth, pale green beneath and dark green above.
Infloresence is a corymbose-umbel with 2 to 4 flowers on a peuncle up to 2 cm long, appears in leaf axis all along the stem. Fruits are round, numerous minute round and brownish seeded capsules with two carpels (Grand et al., 2006).
Figure 2.1: Picture of Hedyotis corymbosa
Scientific Classification
Kingdom : Plantae
Subkingdom : Tracheobionta
Super division : Spermatophyta
Division : Magnoliophyta
Class : Magnoliopsida
Sub class : Asteridae
Order : Rubiales
Family : Rubiaceae
Genus : Hedyotis
Species : corymbosa
Binomial name
Hedyotis corymbosa
Pharmacological Properties of Hedyotis corymbosa
The plant possess a number of pharmacological and medicinal properties which are as follows; the whole plant methanolic extract of Hedyotis corymbosa inhibited the different strains of the bacteria like Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, proteu and Pseudomonas.
The plant extract inhibited both gram positive and gram negative bacteria. The whole plant methanolic extract showed significant antifungal activity against Candida albicans and Aspergillus nigar (Zahir and Kumaresan 2013). The methanolic extract of plant was studied in antimalarial activity by both in vitro and in vivo methods.
MRC-pf.20 and MRC-pf.303 (Chloroquine sensitive) plasmodium falciparum strains was significantly inhibited by methanolic plant extract. In vivo mice anti malarial model, the methanolic plant extract with combination of curcumin significantly control the growth of marail parasite in mice blood (Kirti et al., 2009).
The human leukemia cell line K562 growth was inhibited by ethanolic leaf extract of Hedyotis corymbosa by cell viability measured method sulforhodamine (SRB) assay and showed the capability of anti cancer activity. The plant extract significant anti cancer activity was measured by using ELISA plate reader at 540 to 690 nm.
The activity of leaf extract was comparable with standard control drug Adriamycin (Khushbu et al., 2012). The methanolic whole plant extract showed significant anticancer property in MCF-7 human breast carcinoma cells, analysed by using [3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] assay (MTT assay) (Susi Endrini 2011).
Significant effect of Hedyotis corymbosa ethanolic extract was observed in uterine contraction. The plant extract was tested on isolated uterine horn preparation of virgin female Sprague dawley rat by using De. Jalon physiological solution with the help of langendroff apparatus. The activity of ethanolic extract was tested at different concentrations. The ethanolic extract response was compared with standard acetylcholine, which revealed significant response (Tine et al., 2011).
Hedyotis corymbosa showed significant hepatoprotective activity against perchloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride and D-Galactosamine induced liver toxicity in experimental animals. Ethanolic extract of plant on perchloroethylene induced hepatic damage in female wisatar rats revealed significant activity by reducing liver marker enzymes AST, ALT, LDH, lipid peroxidation and increase in anti oxidant enzymes (Rathi et al., 2009).
CCl4 induced hepatoprotective activity of Hedyotis corymbosa ether, ethanol, butanol, butanone, petroleum ether and ethyl acetate fractions was evaluated in albino rats. petroleum ether and ethyl acetate fractions didn’t show significant activity.
Ether, ethanol, butanol and butanone extracts revealed significant hepatoprotective activity (Rajshekar et al., 2009). D-Galactosamine induced hepatotoxicity was significantly recovered by Hedyotis corymbosa methanolic extract by analysing different liver enzymes (Ramesh et al., 2012).
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