INVITRO ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF THE DIFFERENT SOLVENT FRACTIONS OF CRUDE METHANOLIC EXTRACT OF JUSTICIA CARNEA

Abstract

The necessity to examine medicinal plants for phytochemicals and bioactivities has been brought to light by the recent increase in interest in using native medicinal plants to treat diseases. This study aimed to assess the free radical scavenging activity of various solvent fractions of Justicia. carnea, and to evaluate and quantify the phenolic (TPC) and flavonoid (TFC) content in various solvent fractions of the methanolic extract of J. carnea. The TPC was discovered to be high in methanolic and n-hexane fractions at (31.28 ± 0.020 and 21.40 ± 0.020 mg GAE/g respectively) a similar trend was also observed in TFC with n-hexane and methanolic fractions having a highest concentration at (18.30 ± 0.015 and 19.29 ± 0.023 mg QE/g). The result of the DPPH assay showed a concentration-dependent increase in activity across all fractions with the n-hexane faction displaying the highest activity at 80.21±0.025%, the aqueous, ethylacetate and methanol fraction had DPPH radical scavenging activity of 60, 68 and 61.67%, respectively. The FRAP assays showed that all fractions had a concentration-dependent increase in invitro antioxidant activity with the n-Hexane, aqueous, methanol and ethylacetate fractions displaying the highest activity to be 63.92%, 74.26, 57.61 and 65.20%, respectively. The activity observed can be attributed to the flavonoid content of the fractions. The findings from this study show that J. carnea is a viable medicinal alternative in preventing and treating diseases associated with oxidative stress.