Secondary Metabolites of Medicinal Plants. Bharat Singh

2.5 Aegle Species

      2.5.1 Ethnopharmacological Properties and Phytochemistry

Aegle marmelos (Linn.) Correa ex Roxb. (Fam. – Rutaceae) is considered as an important medicinal plant of India, Burma, and Ceylon (Srivastva et al. 1996). This plant species is used in a traditional system of medicine for the treatment of intermittent fever, intestinal ailments, and fertility control, taken as stimulant after childbirth by tribal women (Basu and Sen 1974). The ethanolic extract of this plant species is used in treatment of ulcers, abscess, backache, vomiting, cuts, weakness of heart, acute bronchitis, blood sugars, diarrhea, and dropsy (George et al. 2003). The leaf and flower juice are considered as laxative, hair and stomach tonic, and asthmatic, sometimes mixed with mustard oil to cure cold, cough, and other respiratory ailments (Rahman et al. 1986). The fruits are used in diarrhea, dysentery, gastric troubles, constipation, ulcer, intestinal parasites, gonorrhea, and epilepsy and as laxative, digestive tonic, and brain and heart tonic (Ohashi et al. 1995). The unripe fruit powder can be taken as medicine to kill Entamoeba histolytica and Ascaris lumbricoides (Dutta et al. 2014). The leaves, roots, seed, bark, and fruits of this plant contain a large number of compounds possess anti-microfilarial, antipyretic, hypoglycemic, wound healing, insecticidal (Nugroho et al. 2013; Neeraj et al. 2017), and antidiarrhoeal properties against castor oil-induced models (Vrushabendra et al. 2007). The hydroalcoholic extract of leaves demonstrated antitumor effects against Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (Jagetia et al. 2003), leukemic K562, T-lymphoid jorhat, β-lymphoid Raji, and erythroleukemic human erythro leukemia (HEL) (Lampronti et al. 2003). The marmelide isolated from leaves, stem and stem bark, fruit, root, and root bark of this plant showed antiviral activity (Badam et al. 2002). The essential oils purified from the leaves of Bael plant exhibited antifungal activity against Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Trichophyton rubrum, Microsporum gypseum, Microsporum audouinii, Microsporum cookie, Epidermophyton floccosum, Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, Histoplasma capsulatum (Jain 1977; Balakumar et al. 2011), and Trichophyton terrestre (Pitre and Srivastava 1987). Similarly, the ethanolic, chloroform, and methanolic extract of roots, seeds, and fruits showed antibacterial effects against Escherichia coli (Joshi and Magar 1952), Aeromonas sp., Pseudomonas solanacearum, Xanthomonas vesicatoria (Pandey et al. 1981), Vibrio cholerae, Salmonella typhimurium, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, S. typhi, Pseudomonas putida, and Bacillus anthracis (Rusia and Srivastva 1988; Behera et al. 2014; Nandedkar et al. 2017; Raja and Khan 2017). The lupeol and skimmianine isolated from leaves demonstrated anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic (Getha and Varalakshmi 2001), antihistaminic (Arul et al. 2004, 2005), antidiabetic against streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats (Kamalakkanan et al. 2003; Kamalakkanan and Prince 2005; Ceriello 2006), antimalarial (Mishra et al. 1991; White 2004; Guha et al. 2006), antioxidant (Kumar et al. 2016), antifertility (Agrawal et al. 2012), and cytotoxic activities (Radchatawedchakoon et al. 2015).

The several types of compounds, viz aegeline, skimmianine (Riyanto et al. 2001), γ-sitosterol, aegeline, lupeol, rutin, marmesinin, β-sitosterol, flavone, glycoside, O-isopentenyl halfordinol, marmeline and phenylethyl cinnamamides (Guhabakshi et al. 1999), O-(3,3-dimethylallyl)halfordinol, N-2-ethoxy-2-(4-methoxyphenyl) ethylcinnamamide, N-2-methoxy-2-[4-(3′,3′-dimethylallyloxy)phenyl] ethylcinnamamide, N-2-methoxy-2-(4-methoxyphenyl) ethylcinnamamide and marmeline (Manandhar et al. 1978), N-2-[4-(3′,3′-dimethylallyloxy)phenyl] ethylcinnamide, marmeline, N-4-methoxystyryl cinnamide and N-2-hydroxy-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl) ethylcinnamide, aegeline (Govindachari and Premila 1983), anhydromarmeline, aegelinosides A and B (Phuwapraisirisan et al. 2008), halfordino, ethylcinnamamide and marmeline (Yadav and Chanotia 2009), α-phellandrene, p-cymene, limonene (Yadav and Chanotia 2009), psoralen, xanthotoxin, o-methylscopoletin, scopoletin, tembamide, skimmin (Shoeb et al. 1973), marmesin (Chatterjee and Mitra 1949; Chatterjee and Roy 1959), marmelosin, psoralen, bergapten (Shinde and Laddha 2015), aegeline, umbelliferone, 8-hydroxypsoralen, and angelicin were isolated and identified from the leaf, fruit, root, heartwood, and bark of A. marmelos (Avula et al. 2016). Besides these reported compounds, other compounds such as marmelosin (Nadkarni 1986), marmesinine, alloimperatorin, β-sitosterol-β-D-glucoside and rutin (Sharma et al. 1980), marmenol, a new 7-geranyloxycoumarin [7-(2,6-dihydroxy-7-methoxy-7-methyl-3-octaenyloxy) coumarin] praealtin D, trans-cinnamic acid, valencic acid, 4-methoxy benzoic acid, betulinic acid, N-p-cis- and trans-coumaroyltyramine, montanine, rutaretin (Ali and Pervez 2004), uronic acid and L-rhamnose (Basak et al. 1982), palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid and linolenic acid (Farooq 2005), marmin, imperatorin and skimmianine (Gajbhiye et al. 2016), 1-decanyl godoleate, behenyl oleate, isophytyl salicylate, lacceroic acid (Sultana et al. 2018), marmelosin, luvangetin, auraptene, marmelide, fagarine, marmine from bark, aegeline, lupeol, cineol, cuminaldeyde, eugenol, marmesinine, citronella (Dutta et al. 2014), and rutaretin (Maity et al. 2009), furanocoumarin, 3′-prenyloxypsoralen imperatorin and xanthotoxin (Radchatawedchakoon et al. 2015), marminal and 7′-O-methylmarm, β-sitosteryl pentadecanoate, 4-methoxy-1-methyl-2-quinolone, 4-sitosten-3-one, lupeol, imperatorin, xanthotoxin, dictamnine, (+)-epoxyaurapten, γ-fagarine, scoparone, umbelliferone, scopoletin, decursinol, marmesin, marmin and integriquinolone (Yang et al. 1996), umbelliferone β-D-galactopyranoside (Kumar et al. 2013), marmelosin were separated and identified from metanolic and ethanolic extracts of fruits, bark, stem, and leaves of A. marmelos (Shinde et al. 2014). Aegeline-A and aegeline-B, aegeline and ρ-hydroxybenzoic