PHARMACOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES AND NUTRITIONAL COMPOSITIONS OF LEPTOCARPUS DISJUNCTUS

Abstract

Leptocarpus disjunctus Mast., the edible plant which has an indigenous warning about its side effects for dizziness and drowsiness symptoms. However, there are no scientific evidences on these activities and also the nutritional compositions report. Hence, this research aimed to investigate hypnotic and anxiolytic activities using animal models, and to provide nutritional compositions. L. disjunctus showed high vitamin C content. They mainly contained linoleic acid and linolenic acid. They had a high level of potassium and phosphorus. In addition, anxiolytic activities were evaluated in mice and rats using locomotor determination by evaluated plus maze test, open field test and rotarod performance test. Hypnotic activities were performed using preliminary of sleep analysis in Drosophila melanogaster and pentobarbitone sodium induced sleeping time test in mice. The sleep architecture and sleep quality in rats were obtained from sleep-wake analysis and NREM delta activity using electroencephalograph. L. disjunctus showed the effective potencies for hypnotic tests, locomotors activities and sleep-wake analysis. They showed a dose relationship in sleeping time of pentobarbitone induced sleeping time test (p<0.01) and also showed an antagonistic effect on the shortening in sleep time induced by flumazenil. The consort results in locomotors activities and results in sleeping time and NREM sleep can be summarized that the ethanolic extract of L. disjunctus has a tendency to be a hypnotic and anxiolytic plant which possibly has benzodiazepine-like hypnotic activity. Moreover, this study created a nutritional data and provided nourishment of L. disjunctus.