The present study was designed to investigate the effect of Oroxylum indicum …

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• Figures
• Tables

Indian medicinal plants and many herbal formulations belonging to the traditional systems of medicines have been investigated as liver protective drugs (Jose and Kuttan, 2000). Oroxylum indicum, Vent. (Syonakh), is an indigenous plant, found in India, Ceylon, Malaya, Cochin, China, Philippines and Indonesia. Oroxylum indicum is used in traditional Ayurvedic medicine to alleviate thirst, rheumatism, dysentery, anorexia, bronchitis, eruptive fevers and dropsy. It is also regarded as tonic, aphrodisiac, carminative, bitter and anthelmintic. Roots of Oroxylum indicum is one of the ingredients of traditional Ayurvedic formulation viz. Dasamula, Chyavanaprasa, Brahma Rasayana, Dhanawantara Ghrita, Dantyadyarista, Awalwha and Narayana Taila. It is reported that Oroxylum indicum plant possesses anti-inflammatory, diuretic, anti-arthritic, antifungal and antibacterial activity (Warrier et al., 1997). The stem bark of this plant is reported to contain flavonoids namely, baicalein, chrysin, oroxylin-A, scutellarin etc (Sankara et al., 1972-a; Sankara et al., 1972-b). Seeds of this plant are reported to contain ellagic acid (Vasantha et al., 1991). Baicalein is reported to possess an anti-inflammatory (Tie et al., 2002), anti-ulcer (Kennouf et al., 2003), antioxidant (Ng et al., 2000), hepatoprotective (Niedworok et al., 1999) and immunomodulatory activity (Lien et al., 2003), while chrysin and baicalein both are reported to have antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activity (Tahara et al., 1987; Kujumgier et al., 1999). Furthermore, biochanin-A possesses anti-fungal action and tumor necrosis factor-α (Knight et al., 1996). Ellagic acid is an important polyphenolic compound (Jadhav et al., 2004). As a result of these findings, the present study was undertaken to evaluate, the effects of different fractions of Oroxylum indicum against liver damage in experimental animals model and further to establish the relationship between the hepatoprotective and antioxidant enzyme activity.