RESEARCH ARTICLE Antioxidant and anti-inflam a

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground It is well known that reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as superoxide anion (O2 •-), hydroxyl radicals (OH•), singlet oxygen (1O2) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), play a major role in the development of oxidative stress that can lead to many illnesses including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, inflammation, degenerative diseases, cancer, anemia, and ischemia [1]. Many synthetic antioxidant agents have been developed to remediate oxidative stress. However, the factors such as high cost, lack of availability and side effects remained as major setbacks in combating oxida-tive stress. In this direction, natural antioxidants received a prominence as they are often free from side effects, less expensive and abundant in many plant sources [1]. Plant based antioxidant compounds [1,2] play a defen-sive role by preventing the generation of free radicals and hence are extremely beneficial to alleviate the dis-eases caused by oxidative stress [3,4]. Many investiga-tions revealed that phenolics and flavonoids content [1,5–10] contribute to the antioxidant activities of plants