Hygeia journal for drugs and medicines

1-7

Authors: Biren N. Shah and A. K. Seth

Trichosanthes dioica Roxb. (Family: Cucurbitaceae), commonly known as “Sespadula” in English and “Parwal” in Hindi, is widely grown throughout India. Fruits of this plant are used as a vegetable in Indian traditional food system from time immemorial. Besides fruits, other parts of the plant, such as the leaves and tender shoots, have also been used in the traditional system of medicine since ancient times. The pointed gourd has been used for overcoming problems like constipation, fever, skin infection, wounds and also improves appetite and digestion. The immature fruits are used as a vegetable and as ingredients of soup, stew, curry, sweet, or eaten fried and as dorma with roe stuffing. The present review describes the morphological and pharmacological aspects of Trichosanthes dioica and summarizes the most interesting findings obtained in the preclinical and clinical research related to the plant.

14-21

Authors: Sandhya.S, Jafferi S.A.H , Vinod K.R, Ottilia Banji, David Banji, Chaitanya R.S.N.A.K.K, Chandrasekhar J, Venkataramana.K .

The present study was undertaken to evaluate anthelmintic and larvicidal activity of crude ethanolic leaf extract of Physalis angulata belonging to family Solanaceae. Pheretima posthuma was used as the test worms. Various concentrations of ethanolic extracts were tested in the anthelmintic screening, which involved the determination of the time of paralysis (P) and time of death (D) of the worms. Piperazine citrate was included as the standard reference and distilled water as the control. In the case of larvicidal activity, the study was conducted on Culex quniquefasicatus species of mosquito larvae and the rate of larval mortality was calculated. The results indicated that the crude ethanolic extract significantly demonstrated paralysis and also caused the death of the helminthes especially at a higher concentration of 50 mg/ml, as compared to standard reference piperazine citrate. Similarly, very optimistic results were observed for Culex quniquefasicatus species of mosquito larvae and LC50 value was calculated as 51.8802 mg/l.

32-37

Authors: Minu Sujith, Sujith Abraham*and Madhu.C.Divakar

A simple, accurate and reproducible visible spectrophotometric method was developed for the estimation of cefepime in pure and vial formulation. Cefepime with 1-Chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene in presence of dimethyl sulfoxide at 45oC has formed a yellow colored complex having a maximum absorbance at 420nm.The calibration graph was linear in the range 20µg/ml to50µg/ml.

43-53

Authors: G. Agarwal*, A.K. Pant , and S.K. Hore

The study was designed to evaluate the effect of the methanol, chloroform, acetone and aqueous extracts of different parts of Trichilia connaroides, Ajuga bracteosa, Ajuga macrosperma, Ajuga parviflora of Indian Himalayan region and a reference drug albendazole on isometric contractions of the poultry worm Ascaridia galli. The frequency and amplitude of spontaneous muscular contractions of A. galli were recorded on the physiography through force transducer. There was inhibition in amplitude and frequency of the contractile activity as compared to control in a dose-dependent manner by methanol extracts of seeds (IC50 3.93±0.70), pericarps (IC507.09± 2.64), aqueous extract of roots (IC50 6.40± 4.74) of T. connaroides, methanol extracts of A. parviflora roots (IC50 16.79± 2.93) A. macrosperma roots (IC501.73± 0.02) and A. bracteosa aerial parts (IC50 4.49± 0.72). These observations indicated the paralytic effect of the extracts on A. galli. There was no inhibition contractile activity by chloroform extract of seeds, acetone extract of leaves of T. connaroides and methanol extract of A. bracteosa roots on autorhythmicity of A. galli.