Antioxidant and antiacetylcholine esterase potential of aerial parts of Conocarpus erectus, Ficus variegata and Ficus maclellandii

The current study was designed to check the antioxidant and enzyme inhibition potential of various extracts/ fractions of three selected plants. The aerial parts of Conocarpus erectus (Combretaceae), Ficus variegata (Moraceae) and Ficus maclellandii (Moraceae) were extracted with ethanol (95%) and the resulting crude extracts were partitioned with n-hexane, chloroform and n-butanol successively. Folin-Ciocalteu reagent was used to calculate the total phenolic contents, flavonoids contents were calculated with aluminum chloride while antioxidant and enzyme studies were carried out through standard protocols. All extracts/fractions contained reasonable amount of phenolic compounds ranging from 0.58-58.23mg CE/g of DW and 0.43-30.56mg GAE/g of DW. Total flavonoids were determined using rutin and quercetin standards, ranging from 2.65-18.2 mg rutin equivalent/g of dry weight and 0.92-5.41mg quercetin equivalent/g of dry weight. Antioxidant studies such as DPPH inhibition FRAP and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) was checked. The crude ethanolic extract of C. erectus showed maximum antiradical scavenging power (90.43%; IC50=7 µg) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (16.5µM eq.FeSO4.7H2O), respectively while leave extract of F. variegata (chloroform) was the most active (0.6577) in TAC among other extracts of the selected medicinal plants. Butanolic leave extract of C. erectus exhibited maximum enzyme inhibition activity (91.62% with IC50 40µg/ml) while other extracts showed significant activity. It was observed from results that all extracts/fractions of under consideration plants, exhibited significant bioactivities especially ethanolic and butanolic fractions, which may be the richest source of such type of activities.