Indigenous Myanmar medicinal plants and comparison of their in vitro antioxidant, antiglycation, and antimicrobial activities

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential biological activities of 23 ethanolic extracts from 19 traditional medicinal plants from Myanmar. Methods: Antioxidant activity was determined using DPPH, nitric oxide and superoxide free radical scavenging assays. Antiglycation activity was studied with non-enzymatic protein glycation assay. Total phenolic content was measured compared with the gallic acid standard curve. The antimicrobial activity was evaluated against six clinically important bacteria by agar well-diffusion method. Results: Among the studied plant extracts, AGE228 (Syzygium cumini (L.) Skeels. seed) was the promising medicinal plant for oxidative stress-related disease as it showed high antioxidant activities with the percent inhibition of 75.80 ± 1.02 and 98.45 ± 1.12 for DPPH and NO radical scavenging assays. The extract AGE223 ( Tamarindus indica Linn. bark) also showed the high antioxidant activity for SO radical scavenging assay with the percent inhibition of 89.35 ± 5.72. These two extracts contained the highest phenolic content with 233.85 ± 0.04 and 214.47 ± 0.01 mgGAE/g of extract, respectively. AGE221 (Terminalia chebula Retz. branch) was the best AGE inhibitor with the percent inhibition of 79.06 ± 1.90. Most of the selected extracts showed antimicrobial activity. Among them, the antimicrobial activity of AGE232 (Phyllanthus distichus Muell. fruit) was comparable to the standard antibiotic, Chloramphenicol. Conclusion: The results confirmed that the ethanolic extracts of traditionally used medicinal plants could be effective not only for decreasing the oxidative stress and glycation end-products formation in glycation related diseases but also for treating the infectious diseases.