Free Radical Scavenging Potential and Reducing Capacity of Flowers of Nerium oleander Linn

Abstract

Nerium oleander (Apocynaceae) is a drought-tolerant evergreen free-flowering shrub that has been used in Chinese folk medicine. The present study evaluated the free radical-scavenging activity of the extracts of N. oleander flowers in aqueous, n.hexane, petroleum ether, ethylacetate, and ethanol using in vitro assays of 1,1-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical-scavenging assay, lipid peroxidation inhibition assay, nitric oxide radical-scavenging assay, and reducing potential. Further, the extracts were screened qualitatively and quantitatively for the phytochemical constituents. Both ethanol and aqueous extracts possessed significant amounts of phenolic compounds and glycosides and exhibited better free radical-scavenging potential than the others. Results indicate that demonstrated antioxidant activity of the N. oleander flower extracts was due to the phytoconstituents in them.

Keywords:

• lipid peroxidation
• in vitro
• antioxidant

Acknowledgments

All authors have equally contributed for this work. The authors are grateful to the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for providing Junior Research Fellowships for the first three authors during the course of the study. We acknowledge the staff and the members of the Herbal and Indian Medicine Research Laboratory, Sri Ramachandra University, India, for their immense help in in vitro studies.