Abstract Terminalia belerica Roxb. has a long ethnomedicinal tradition of being used as a remedial agent in various diseases. The present study aimed to investigate antioxidant and cytotoxic activity of the methanolic extract of T. belerica fruits. Antioxidant potential of the extract was evaluated by using the 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging assay, nitric oxide scavenging assay, reducing power and total antioxidant capacity and the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) scavenging assay. The extract showed significant activities in all antioxidant assays compared to ascorbic acid in a dose dependent mode. In the DPPH, the NO and the H2O2 scavenging assays, the extract of T. belerica displayed significant antioxidant activities with the IC50 values of 179.16, 96.553 and 134.29 µg/mL, respectively. In addition to strong reducing power, total antioxidant activity of the extract was also found to increase in a dose dependent manner. The extract also showed moderate cytotoxic activity in brine shrimp lethality bioassay and the LC50 value was found to be 7.612 µg/mL. The analgesic activity was evaluated using acetic acid-induced writhing test in mice. The extract, at a dose of 500 mg/kg, showed a maximum of 19.71 % inhibition (p < 0.05) of writhing reaction compared to the reference drug diclofenac-sodium (66.96 %).
Keywords Terminalia belerica, antioxidant, DPPH, cytotoxicity and analgesic.