Introduction

Humans have made use of the flora and fauna over eons as food as well as medicines. All system of medicines, like Ayurveda, Siddha, Naturopathy, etc. make extensive use of plants and herbs. World Health Organization (WHO) states that plants are being used as therapeutic agents for most of the primary health care requirements by ¾^th of the overall population (Bruneton, 1995). Adhatoda vasica has a common name as malabar nut, white vasa, and yellow vasa and it has some regional name in Kannada as adusoge, in Sanskrit isatarusa, in Telugu, it is addasaramu, in Hindi it is arusa, in Bangla it is basak. Adhatoda vasica belonging to the family Acanthaceae. It is disseminated throughout India, mainly available in lower Himalayas and also in other areas like SriLanka, Burma, and Malaysia, etc., (Prajapati, Purohit, Sharma, & Tarun, 2003) Height of this plant ranges from 1.5-2.0 cm, leaves are about a width of 0.5cm and 10-15 cm. The flowers that bloom to this plant are mostly in white with purple dots. Adhatoda vasica plant is mainly used in the treatment of respiratory disorders like chronic bronchitis, asthma, cold, and cough. The whole plant can be used to get rid of intestinal parasites. Adhatoda Vasica offers unflagging relief from thick and sticky sputum in acute stages of bronchitis. Malabar nut was being used in the treatment of concourse disorders which covers heart troubles, bronchitis, blood disorders, leucoderma, fever, jaundice, vomiting, and leprosy, loss of memory, leucoderma, tumors, sore-eye, mouth troubles, and gonorrhea. The leaves of vasica can be used as a cataplasm on wounds and used as an external application because of the anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties also relieves rheumatic pain and inflammation. It also helps to cease internal and external bleeding caused because of peptic ulcer, bleeding gums, and piles (Sen & Ghosh, 1925).

Materials and Methods

Classification

Kingdom-Plantae

Subkingdom-Trachebionta

Division-Angiospermae

Super division-spermatophyta

Class-Dicotyledoneae

Subclass-Asteridae

Order-Tubiflorae

Family-Acanthaceae

Genus-Adhatoda

Species-Vasica Nees.

Regional Names

English-Malabar Nut

Telugu-Addasaramu

Hindi-Arus

Kannada-Adusoge

Tamil-Atatotai

Gujarati-Aradusi

Malayalam-Aatalootakam

Bengali-Basak

Manipuri-Nongmangkha

Nepali-Asuro

Sanskrit-Atarusa

Oriya-Basango

Marathi-Adulasa

Konkani-Adulasha

Mizo-Kawl-dai

Assamese-Boga.

Important formulations

Important formulationscontaining Asgandof unani, Ayurveda formulations are as follows,

Syrup Basakarista

Basadi kwath

Sarbat Ejaz

Sarbat Tulsi

Sarbat Sadar

Sarbat Vasac

Basaboleho (Hossain & Hoq, 2016).

Chemical Constituents

It contain phenols, flavonoids, saponins, tannins, anthraquinones, amino acids, reducing sugars, triterpenes, vasicolinone, vasicol, anisotine, steroids, betaine, 7-hydroxyvasicine, quinazoline alkaloids vasicine, 3- deoxyvasicine, steroids carbohydrate and alkanes (Kumar, Ram, Samarth, & Kumar, 2005).

Ethnomedicinal uses

Adhatoda vasica is being used to treat various diseases from ancient times to treat respiratory infections in both adults and children’s. In England, the medical practitioner used this particular extract in the treatment of Antispasmodic, Expectorant, febrifuge and also in curing typhus fever and diphtheria (Wren, 1932).

Whole plant

Various formulations are prepared from the Adhatoda vasica plant by compounding with ginger and tulsi for using them as an expectorant and antispasmodic. In Srilanka, the whole pant of Adhatoda vasica was used in the treatment of multiple issues such as menorrhagia, excessive phlegm, bleeding piles, sexual disorders and impotence (Dymock, Waeden, & Hooper, 1890). The whole plant is shown in Figure 1.

Root

Various formulations such as powder, decoction and paste were prepared from the roots of Adhatoda vasica and used in the treatment of a broad spectrum of diseases such as diabetes, cough and certain liver disorders, tuberculosis, diphtheria, malarial fever, leucorrhoea and eye diseases. The extract obtained from the maceration of the root is used in the pubic and vagina region. The extract helps during childbirth for the extrusion of the baby from the vagina. Gonorrhea can also be treated by the macerated extract of the root (Roberts, 1931).

Fruit

Adhatoda vasica fruit extract is active against like cold, fever, bronchitis, diarrhea, jaundice, antispasmodic, dysentery (Kumar et al., 2005).

Flower

The Adhatoda vasica plant contains constituents like triterpenes flavonoids they are apigenin astragalin kaemferol vitexin quercetin. The plant blooms in January-march. In south-east Asia fresh flowers are used to cure diseases like cough, bronchitis, phthisis, asthma, and also used as antiseptic to improve blood circulation (Kirtikar & Basu, 1975).

Leaves

The leaf of Adhatoda vasica is a dicot leaf which is covered by the single layer of epidermis on both sides of the leaves. They are amphistomatic and contains trichomes on both the sides of leaves. For clearing the respiratory passages before an active yogic practice, the tender shoots of the plant with very little ginger is chewed. (Adnan et al., 2010). In most parts of Southeast Asia, various extracts are prepared from the leaves and are used in many ways such as wound healing agent, expectorant, anti-leprotic, for jaundice, for headache, for snake-bites (bruised leaves in Sri Lanka and India) and in various skin diseases (Pushpangadan, Nyman, & George, 1995). They are also used in the treatment of constipation, rheumatoid arthritis, gout and in constipation. The leaves are burned and the smoke from the leaves are used in treating asthma. The leaves are even used as pesticide and insecticide (Agrawal, Chauhan, & Mathur, 2009).

Ethnopharmacology

Anti-asthmatic and bronchodilator activity 1⁰

Alkaloids present in the Adathoda vasica such as vasicine and vasicinone are therapeutically employed as potent respiratory agents. The extracts of the leaf and root parts of Adathoda vasicaare have potential action against a multitude of lung disorders such as bronchiole disorders, bronchitis, cough, and cold. The decoction prepared from Adathoda leaves possess soothing effect which helps to clear throat irritation and can also act as an expectorant (Dhuley, 1999).

(Dangi, Patel, & Yaduvanshi, 2015), have studied the Anti-asthmatic activity of adhatoda vasica by extracting the powdered leaves using ethanol and its effects on guinea pigs which were induced with bronchospasm using acetylcholine and histamine and also conducted in-vitro studies on isolated guinea-pig ileum. The extract has shown promising effects by inhibiting the bronchial construction dose-dependently (Dangi et al., 2015).

Anti-bacterial activity

The antibacterial effects of Adathoda vasica were identified by extracting the leaves with various solvents and testing them on microorganism streaked Petri dish. The Petri dishes after placing the extract either by disc diffusion method or well method were incubated at 37^oC for 24hrs. The extract is found to be active against some of the gram-positive and negative bacterial strains (Sarker, Ahamed, Chowdhury, & Begum, 1970).

Wound Healing activity

The whole plant was found to be possessing wound healing activity. The alcoholic extract of the whole plant was applied to test the animals after inducing wounds on the vertebral columns and compared with the control group which received no treatment. The groups that were treated with Adathosa vasica were found to have greater wound healing activity compared to that of the control group (Bhargava, Singh, & Kumar, 1988)

(Gv & Sundar, 2010), have studied the wound healing effects of the Adhatoda vasica plant in Wistar albino rats. The plant methanol, diethyl ether, and chloroform were extracted successively, and formulated in the form of ointment. An incision was made in the animals and the ointment was applied to the incision. Among all the extracts, the methanolic extract has displayed potent wound healing activity (Gv et al., 2010).

Anti-tussive activity

(Srivastava & Choudhary, 2016), have prepared the ethyl acetate and methanol extracts of Adhatoda vasica leaves for inducing cough with Sulphur dioxide and ammonium hydroxide and comparing with the standard (Codeine phosphate and dextromethorphan). Both the extracts of ethyl acetate and methanol have shown significant inhibition in cough refluxes at the dose of 500mg/kg but the results of ethyl acetate are slightly better than that of methanol (Srivastava et al., 2016).

(Chattopadhyay et al., 2011), isolated the pectic arabinogalactan from the aqueous extract of Adhatoda vasica (50mg/kg) and studied its effects on the guinea pigs by inducing cough with citric acid sprayed as an aerosol using jet nebulizer by comparing the effects of the extract against codeine phosphate (10mg/kg). The extract was found to be significant in treating citric acid-induced cough (Chattopadhyay et al., 2011).

Anti-tubercular activity

The anti-tubercular activity of the Adhatoda vasica is due to the production of ambroxol and bromhexine from vascine which exhibits potent anti-tubercular activity by acting on the Mycotubercular tuberculosis strain (Narimanian et al., 2005).

(Ignacimuthu & Shanmugam, 2010), have done the extraction of powdered leaves with hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol and checked the extract against Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain. Rifampicin (2µgm/ml) and isoniazid (0.2 µgm/ml) are taken as reference. 100µgm/ml of the extract has shown significant results when compared to other concentrations of the extract (Ignacimuthu et al., 2010).

Hepatoprotective activity

(Bhattacharyya, Pandit, Jana, Sen, & Sur, 2005), prepared the aqueous extract of Adhatoda vasica leaves and studied its hepatoprotective effects in D-galactosamine induced hepatotoxic Wistar Albino rats. Silymarin (25mg/kg) is taken as the reference compound. The aqueous extract of concentrations 50mg/kg and 100mg/kg and silymarin are given to the hepatotoxic rats for testing hepatoprotective activity. The concentration of 100mg/kg has shown significant results when compared with reference compound silymarin (Bhattacharyya et al., 2005).

(Gv & Sundar, 2010), have prepared the methanolic, diethyl ether and chloroform extracts of the leaves and checked its hepatoprotective activity in carbon tetrachloride-induced hepatotoxic Wistar rats. The hepatoprotective activity of all the extracts (200mg/kg) is compared against the reference compound silymarin (100mg/kg). Among all the extracts, the hepatoprotective activity of the methanolic extract is found to be significant (Gv et al., 2010).

Anti-thrombolytic activity

(Uddin, Mahmuduzzaman, Islam, Parvin, & Shahriar, 2013) have prepared the whole plant extract by using a series of solvents starting with distilled methanol followed by n-hexane and carbon tetrachloride filtered an then dried to obtain dry extracts. The anti-thrombolytic activity is evaluated by withdrawing blood from the volunteers and allowed them to clot, and then the procedure was taken ahead by the modified Daginawala method (Uddin et al., 2013).

Anti-acetylcholinesterase

(Ali et al., 2016), prepared methanol leaf extract by maceration and was purified with the HPLC method. This purified constituent was selected for docking studies and compared with tacrine acetylcholinesterase (Ali et al., 2016).

Antimicrobial activity

(Prasad, Swapna, & Prasad, 2011), prepared the n-hexane, methanol and water extracts of the Adhatoda vasica leaves and tested for the antibacterial and antifungal activities of the extracts in the fungal and bacterial strains. The studies were carried out by taking Ciprofloxacin and Fluconazole as reference compounds for antibacterial and antifungal activities. All the extracts have shown satisfactory results, but the methanolic extracts had shown more promising results when compared to the other 2 extracts (Dymock et al., 1890; Pradhan & Pradhan, 2015).

(Sheebab & Mohan, 2012), have prepared methanol, ethanol, acetone, chloroform, diethyl ether and water extracts of Adhatoda vasica and tested on the Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogens, Proteus vulgaris, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumonia bacterial strains for the assessment of antibacterial activity. Even though all extracts have shown better results diethyl extract has shown even more promising results (Sheebab et al., 2012).

Antioxidant and Radical Scavenging Activity

(Pant, Basu, Sindhu, & R, 2015), has prepared the ethanolic extract of Adhatoda vasica leaves by soxhlet extraction and performed various evaluation tests for assessing the antioxidant and radical scavenging activity. DPPH scavenging activity, ABTS scavenging activity, Superoxide anion scavenging activity, H₂O₂ radical scavenging activity, NO scavenging activity, reducing power assay, lipid peroxidation assay, TBA method were done on the extract. All the tests have shown dose-dependent results (Pant et al., 2015).

Anti-ulcer activity

(Shrivastava, Srivastava, Banerjee, & Nivsarkar, 2006) prepared the extract of Adhatoda vasica leaf and studied the anti-ulcer effects of the extract on Sprague-Dawley rats. The ulcer was induced by two methods such as ethanol-induced ulcer, and pylorus ligation plus aspirin dose. The effects of the extract are compared with the marketed formulation as reference. The extracts have shown significant results when compared to that of the reference compound (Shrivastava et al., 2006).

(Vinothapooshan & Sundar, 2011) prepared the methanolic, chloroform, and diethyl ether extracts of Adhatoda vasica leaves and studied its anti-ulcer activity on the ulcer induced Wistar albino rats. The ulcer was induced by alcohol and aspirin. The effects of the extracts were compared with ranitidine which is taken as standard. The 200mg/kg dose of methanolic extract has shown considerable results when compared with the standard (Vinothapooshan et al., 2011).

Insecticidal activity

Leaves of A.vasica are being used as an insecticide since time immemorial because of its insecticidal activity. According to the literature it was understood that the presence of vasicinol leads to insecticidal activity (Srivastava, Saxena, & Singh, 1965).

(Haifa & Ali, 2016) have prepared the water, acetone and methanolic extracts of Adhatoda vasica and studied its insecticidal effects on Brevicoryne bssicae. The acetone and methanolic extracts had shown promising results against test species B. brassiace and its nymphs. The acetone is having greater mortality when compared to the methanolic extract (Haifa et al., 2016).

Abortifacient activity

The whole plant extract of A.vasica has been used in both helping the child’s delivery by inducing uterine contractions and also for absorption before the first trimester. This is because of the presence of the phytochemical constituent vasicine which is similar to oxytocin (Claeson, Malmfors, Wikman, & Bruhn, 2000).

(Chandhoke, 1982), has studied the abortifacient effects of the Adhatoda vasica leaves on the rats. The leaves of the plants were collected, dried, grounded and extracted with alcohol and water. Both the extracts were administered to the rats after 10 days of insemination. This resulted in the abortion of the fetus in the female rats. A similar study has also been done in the Guinea pig and yielded the same results (Chandhoke, 1982).

Anti-inflammatory activity

Among the chemical constituents present in the Adathoda vasica, vasicine is found to have anti-inflammatory effects. Among all the extracts of the plant, methanolic extract of the plant is showing promising anti-inflammatory activity when its activity is evaluated by modified hen’s egg chorioallantoic membrane test (Chakraborty & Brantner, 2001).

Antidiabetic activity

(Sathyamurthy, 2017) has prepared the methanol extracts of the Adhatoda vasica leaves for 4 days by the soxhlet apparatus and the extract obtained is filtered and dried to get the dry residue. The residue was used to study the antidiabetic effects of Adhatoda vasica. The study was conducted on the Adipocyte 3T3 – L1 cell lines which are derived from 19 days old embryo of Murine Swiss mouse. Deoxyribose assay is performed for the identification of antidiabetic activity of Adhatoda vasica and compared with reference compound quercetin. The extract has shown promising results when compared with the reference compound (Sathyamurthy, 2017).

Conclusions

The plant of Adhatoda vasica is found to have a multitude of activities such as antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-tussive, wound healing activity, anti-tubercular, anti-asthmatic, antimicrobial, insecticidal, anti-ulcer, anti-oxidant and radical scavenging, hepatoprotective, anti-thrombolytic, abortifacient and anti-acetylcholinesterase activities. Because of the above-mentioned activities, the plant has been used since ancient times but the constituents regarding the activity are still unknown. Hence, further studies need to be conducted for perfectly understanding the phytochemical constituents responsible for the above-mentioned activities.

Conflict of Interest

None.

Funding Support

None.