Abstract
Peperomia pellucida is widely used in the traditional medicine such as in the treatment of inflammation, gout, arthritis and wound healing. The present study was performed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of petroleum ether, chloroform and methanol extracts of P. pellucida. The carrageenan-induced rat hind paw edema method was performed to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effect in vivo and the determination of free radical scavenging activity method was carried out to assess the antioxidant effect in vitro. For the anti-inflammatory activity, 1000 mg kg(-1) of petroleum ether extract significantly reduced carrageenan-induced hind paw edema (p<0.05) compared with the control (p<0.01). However, there was no significant anti-inflammatory activity for chloroform and methanol extracts. The antioxidant effect was evaluated by determining the free radical scavenging activity of the three extracts. The total phenol content was determined for the methanol extract (6.93%) that showed the strongest free radical scavenging activity (0.083 mg mL(-1) +/-0.008). Petroleum ether and chloroform showed low free radical scavenging activity compared to methanol extract. The results obtained from this study suggest that this plant is a good natural source for anti-inflammatory and antioxidant therapy.