Abstract
The ethanolic seed extract of Setaria italica was screened for its antioxidant, cytotoxic and anthelmintic activity using DPPH radical scavenging method, brine shrimp lethality bioassay and adult earth worm’s paralysis pattern determination by using albendazole as standard respectively. The results of the study showed that the IC50 values of ethanolic crude extract (10.33 μg/ml), chloroform (11.12 μg/ml), carbon tetrachloride (15.25 μg/ml) and pet ether (12.49 μg/ml) fractions of Setaria italica have shown potent free radical scavenging activity compared to IC50 value of standard BHT (28.08 μg/ml). Assessment of cytotoxic activity of Setaria italica showed that ethanolic crude extract and its different partitionates (pet ether, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform) exhibited cytotoxicity with the LD50 values of 7.71 μg/ml , 6.49 μg/ml, 1.61 μg/ml, 2.59 μg/ml, respectively compared to the vincristine sulphate (LD50 value 0.544 μg/ml). The result of anthelmintic activity evaluation of ethanolic extract of Setaria italica depicted that the ethanolic crude extract at a dose of 50 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml did not show any significant anthelmintic activity compared to the standard albendazole. This study has shown that the ethanolic extract of Setaria italica and its different partitionates possess potent antioxidant activity and chloroform fraction possesses fair cytotoxic activity but any satisfactory anthelmintic activity not assessed from this study.
