Exploration of Ethnopharmacological Potential of Antimicrobial, Antioxidant, Anthelmintic and Phytochemical Analysis of Medicinally Important Plant <i>Centella asiatica</i> (L.) Urban in Mart. and Eichl.

Abstract

As there is a huge pressure on the cultivated medicinal plants and due to this pressure a large number of plants are being eradicated yearly. So to reduce this pressure on the cultivated plants an effort is being done to use the wild plants as a good medicinal agent and a cheaper source as well. The present study was undertaken to find out the Antimicrobial activity, Antioxidant activity and Pharmacological Analysis of Centella asiatica . It is a wild plant and mostly found on the damp places of plains and foothills. It was collected, dried and extracted by maceration method in different polar and non-polar solvents i.e. petroleum ether, chloroform, methanol and distilled water. These extracts were further used to find out the antimicrobial, antioxidant and anthelmintic activities. Centella asiatica showed remarkable values comparable with the standard antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. Well defined zones of inhibition were recorded indicating that the plants were potent against pathogenic microbes, such as i.e. Bcteria ( Staphylococcus aureus , Staphyllococcus saprophyticus , E. coli ) and fungi ( Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Aspergillus parasiticus and Rhizopus oryzae ) . The antioxidant activity of all the plant extracts was studied by DPPH Assay, Total Antioxidant Assay and Total phenolic Assay and the remarkable values comparable with the standard antioxidants were recorded. For pharmacological analysis different secondary metabolites indicated positive results whereas some others gave negative results.