EVALUATION OF ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF HELICIA NILAGIRICA BEDD ON COTTON PELLET-INDUCED GRANULOMA IN RATS

Objective: The present study was undertaken to screen the anti-inflammatory activity of Helicia nilagirica Bedd., an ethnomedicinal plant of Mizoram, India.Methods: In this study inflammation was induced by cotton pellet granuloma model (Sub-acute) using the method adopted by D'Arcy (1960). The anti-inflammatory effect of two doses of methanolic extract of Helicia nilagirica Bedd. was tested and diclofenac was used as a standard drug. The statistical analysis was carried out by One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) followed by Dunnett's multiple comparison tests using GraphPad In Stat 3.0 software.Results: This in vivo anti-inflammatory study shows that the plant extract at two different doses (250 mg/kg and 500 mg/kg) possess significant anti-inflammatory activity (p<0.01). The standard drug diclofenac (10 mg/kg) produces maximum activity by inhibiting the wet weight and dry weight of the cotton pellet, 37.45 % and 43.70 % respectively. Two different doses of the plant extract show significant reduction of wet weight and dry weight of cotton pellet at 15.30% and 17.67% respectively for 250 mg/kg and 21.98% and 23.35% for 500 mg/kg respectively.Conclusion: The result of the study shows that the methanolic bark extract of Helicia nilagirica Bedd. possess anti-inflammatory activity.Keywords: Helicia nilagirica Bedd, Anti-inflammatory, DiclofenacÂ