Unravelling the biological activities of the Byttneria pilosa leaves using experimental and computational approaches

Abstract

Byttneria pilosa is locally known as Harijora, and used by the native hill-tract people of Bangladesh for the treatment of rheumatalgia, snake bite, syphilis, fractured bones, elephantiasis and an antidote for poisoning. The present study was carried out to determine the possible anti-inflammatory, analgesic, neuropharmacological and anti-diarrhoeal activity of the methanol extract of B. pilosa leaves (MEBPL) through in vitro, in vivo and in silico approaches. In the anti-inflammatory study, evaluated by membrane stabilizing and protein denaturation methods, MEBPL showed a significant and dose dependent inhibition. The analgesic effect of MEBPL tested by inducing acetic acid and formalin revealed significant inhibition of pain in both tests. During the anxiolytic evaluation, the extract exhibited a significant and dose-dependent reduction of anxiety-like behaviour in mice. Similarly, mice treated with MEBPL demonstrated dose-dependent reduction in locomotion effect in the open field test and increased sedative effect in the thiopental sodium induced sleeping test. MEBPL also showed good anti-diarrheal activity in both castor oil induced diarrheal and intestinal motility tests. Besides, a previously isolated compound (beta-sitosterol) exhibited good binding affinity in docking and drug-likeliness properties in ADME/T studies. Overall, B. pilosa is a biologically active plant and could be a potential source of drug leads, which warrants further advanced study.