A Study on Thrombolytic and Cytotoxic Activity of Methanolic Extract of Zingiber Officinale

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been well documented for their medicinal purposes for thousands of years and traditional medicines are still a major part of habitual treatments of different maladies in different parts of the world. In recent years, there has been growing interest in alternative therapies and the therapeutic use of natural products, especially those derived from plants. Among the medicinal plants Zingiberofficinale (Roscoe Zingiberaceae) used locally as alleviates coughs in children. From its origin in Southeast Asia and its spread to Europe, it has a long history of use as herbal medicine to treat a variety of ailments, including vomiting, pain, indigestion, and cold-induced syndromes. The present study was carried out to investigate thrombolytic and cytotoxic activity of methanolic extract of Zingiber officinale rhizome. The cytotoxic activity was determined by using brine shrimp lethality bioassay and thrombolytic activity was determined in accordance with clot disruption method.In the thrombolytic activity the methanolic extracts showed clot lysis of 30.13%. The standard of thrombolytic activity, Streptokinase showed clot lysis of 58.38%. For Cytotoxic activity, the methanolic extract showed LC50 value of 30.64 mu g/ml and the reference standard potassium dichromate showed LC50 value of 310 mu g/ml. Our study revealed that the methanolic extract of Zingiber officinale (Roscoe Zingiberaceae) possess cytotoxic and thrombolytic activity. The potential of these activities may be due to the presence of most of the phytochemicals which supports previous claims and validate its uses as an expected folk medicine.