Comprehensive Analysis of Phytochemical Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Ventilago Madraspatana Leaf Extracts

Abstract

Plants have tremendous medicinal value and have been associated with pharmacologically active phytochemicals for thousands of years. These bioactive compounds, especially phenolics and flavonoids, present strong antioxidant activity which can reduce oxidative stress. However, oxidative stress is known to be an upstream cause in the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative disorders. The present study was focused on the investigation of antioxidant qualities by quantifying total phenolic, and flavonoid contents, and evaluating different solvent extracts such as methanol, hexane, and ethyl acetate leaf extract of Ventilago madraspatana in terms of free radical scavenging potential.The methanol extract also offers the highest antioxidant activity in HRS and ABTS radical scavenging total antioxidant activity measurements. High antioxidant activity was also found to be well related with high concentrations of phenolic and flavonoid compounds, hence these two groups of compounds are the main responsible for the antioxidant properties of this plant. As expected, the hexane and ethyl acetate extracts exhibited relatively low antioxidant activities but may have interesting perspectives in terms of bioactive compounds including saponins, triterpenes, and phlobaphenes.Consequently, V. madraspatana methanol extract was able to show a better amount of antioxidant activity with the previous findings that reveal the potential of plants as natural antioxidantsources and support their use in folk medicine only for curative purposes. In addition, the findings will be used as a basis for future studies to identify and characterize key compounds that are known to possess therapeutic properties with an emphasis on preventing or treating diseases associated.