Abstract

Melothria maderaspatana (Linn) Cogn, a plant drug of Siddha medicine, is an annual monoecious tendril climber, belonging to the family Cucurbitaceae, mostly prevalent in South India. It is commonly called Musumusukkai in Tamil. Preliminary phytochemical screening of the plant revealed the presence of phytochemical constituents such as coumarins, flavonoids. Hence an attempt has been made to screen the effect of Melothria maderaspatana in platelet aggregation. Successive extracts of aerial parts of Melothria maderaspatana were used in increasing polarity of solvents (i.e., hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol). The antiplatelet activity of different fractions of Melothria maderaspatana was studied using platelet-rich plasma in presence of ADP. Each extract was tested in concentrations of 100 µg/ml, 200 µg/ml, 400 µg/ml and 500 µg/ml for the study. The ethyl acetate extract showed a dose-dependent antiplatelet activity. Hexane and methanol extracts showed antiplatelet activity only at 200 µg/ml and 400 µg/ml concentrations. Chloroform extract showed negligible antiplatelet activity. However, the inhibition of platelet aggregation was only 50% when compared to the standard Aspirin.