Background: Till now many of medicinal plants having claimed therapeutic value traditionally are waiting scientific\nverification of their efficacy and safety. Accordingly this study is conducted to evaluate the antidiarrheal activity of\nhydromethanolic root extract of Indigofera spicata Forssk. in castor oil induced diarrhea model, misoprostol induced\nsecretion model and its antimotility activity using charcoal as a marker.\nMethods: In all the three models the animals were randomly allocated into five groups of six animals each and\nthen group I mice were received 1 ml/100 g normal saline, group II were treated with standard drug as a positive\ncontrol whereas group III, IV and V were treated with 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg extract doses, respectively. Statistical\nsignificance of differences in the mean of number of defecations, fluid content of faces, intestinal fluid accumulation\nratio, intestinal fluid weight and distance travelled by charcoal between groups was analyzed by SPSS version-21 using\none way ANOVA followed by Tukey�s post hoc multiple comparison.\nResult: The hydromethanolic crude extract of Indigofera spicata at 200 and 400 mg/kg mg/kg doses showed\nstatistically significant (p < 0.05) inhibition of the frequency of defecation and weight difference of the fluid content of\nthe faces compared to the negative controls. For those doses the percentage inhibition of diarrheal feces was 43.62\nand 53.51 %, respectively. The antisecretary activity of the extract in terms of fluid accumulation ratio was not found\nsignificant but in terms of intestinal fluid weight, all the extract doses revealed significant (p < 0.05) inhibition. Unlike\nthe standard drug, the antimotility activity of the extract was not found statistically significant compared to the\nnegative control.\nConclusion: Root of Indigofera spicata Forssk. has shown promising antidiarrheal activity which validates its traditional\nuse. Further studies are needed and possibly the plant may serve as a potential source of new agent in the therapeutic\narmamentarium of diarrhea.
Loading....