Antioxidant profile, and fatty acids analysis of leaves of medicinal plant Piper chaba H. (Chuijhal): a promising source of antioxidant and fatty acids

Piper chaba Hunter belonging to the Piperaceae family, is mainly used as a spice in Bangladesh and West Bengal in India. It is an ethnobotanical-supportive plant. No biological and fatty acid composition study on its’ leaves’ extracts has been found previously. The present study is on the antioxidant activity and fatty acid analysis of P. chaba leaves. The methanol extract of the leaves and its’ different soluble fractionates i.e. n-hexane, dichloromethane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and aqueous were subjected to screening for antioxidant activity. The highest free radical scavenging activity by the DPPH assay method was shown by dichloromethane fractionate (radical scavenger) with an IC₅₀ value of 8.84 µg/mL which is close to the IC₅₀ value of the standard. Chloroform fractionates showed a significant capacity of 216 mg/g (expressed as ascorbic acid equivalents) by the Phosphomolybdenum assay method. The analysis of fatty acids content showed that the leaves contain the highest proportion of caprylic acid (40.31%) and the lowest proportion of lauric acid and linolenic acid (0.39%) as bound form and the highest proportion of caprylic acid (34.43%) and the lowest proportion of linolenic acid (1.08%) as free form. A good number of unsaturated fatty acids such as palmitoleic, oleic, linolenic, and erucic acids were present in the leaves of this plant. About 24.02% palmitoleic acid was found as the free form which indicated that the antioxidant activity of leaves was significant as per the obtained result. This study recommends using the leaves as a potent source of antioxidants and fatty acids. Extraction of bioactive compounds using methanol extract from the leaves will open the root to new drug discovery as it is a great source of alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenes, etc.