In - vitro Antioxidant Potential from the Leaves of Punica granatum Linn. Grown in Bangladesh

The crude ethanolic extract of the leaves of Punica granatum Linn.(Family:Punicaceae)was evaluated for its possibleantioxidant activities growing in northeast part of Bangladesh. Five complementary test systems, namely DPPH free radicalscavenging, nitric oxide scavenging, reducing power, Fe++ion chelating ability and total phenolic content were used fordetermining antioxidant activities of the leaf extract. In DPPH free radical scavenging test, IC50value for ethanolic crude extractwas found fairly significant23.45±0.062 μg/ml while compared to the IC50value of the reference standards ascorbic acid andButylated Hydroxy Anisole (BHA) (5.23±0.034 and6.15±0.027 μg/ml) respectively. The ethanol extract showed maximum nitricoxide (NO) scavenging activity of 76.55±0.89% at 100 μg/ml, where as ascorbic acid exhibited 88.43 ± 0.81% inhibition atthe same concentration. The IC50value for nitric oxide scavenging test wasalso found significant (55.65±0.072 μg/ml) whilecompared to the IC50value of the reference standard ascorbic acid (31.38±0.047 μg/ml). The maximum absorbance for reducingpower assay was found to2.015at 100 μg/ml while compared to2.817and 2.031 for standard ascorbic acid and BHArespectively. TheIC50value of the extract as percentage of Fe++ion chelating ability was determined as65.109μg/ml where thatof EDTA showed8.75μg/ml. The total phenolic amount was also calculated as quite high in ethanolic crude extract378.37mg/gof gallic acid equivalent. Therefore, the obtained results tend to suggest the antioxidant activities of the crude ethanolicextract ofthe leaves of P. granatum and justify its use in folkloric remedies.