IN VITRO ANTIOXIDANT AND ANTIBACTERIAL POTENTIAL OF MEDICINAL PLANT CERASTIUM FONTANUM

Abstract

Naturally God gifted medicinal plants which contain more potentially active compounds their characterization and isolation are very important and can provide us a great help in making new drugs to cure many diseases. Our current attempt was made to obtain the ethanolic extracts of medicinal plant Cerastium fontanum using a hot continuous soxhlet process and also via maceration method. The concentrated dried fraction extracts of Cerastium fontanum such as aqueous, n-hexane, ethyl acetate and dichloromethane were achieved using liquid-liquid extraction which were then evaluated for in vitro antioxidants potential using DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl) assay and also agar-well diffusion method were used for antimicrobial potential. In vitro antioxidants inhibition potential were measured through spectrophotometer at various concentration (500 to 62.5µg/mL) prepared in standard solvent. Among all extracts aqueous fraction showed IC₅₀ = 2.9 ± 0.05mg/mL maximum potency towards stable DPPH much closer to standard control acarbose IC₅₀ = 2.61 ± 0.01mg/mL. The antibacterial activity results indicated that all fractions found active against both strains (gram positive and gram negative) of bacteria. In various extracts only the aqueous fraction extracts showed excellent inhibition potential against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia Coli. While dichloromethane fraction extracts were found active only with gram negative strain. Thus the Cerastium fontanum extracts possess much higher inhibition potential then standard available antibiotics in the market.