Sesquiterpenes lactones including costunolide and dehydrocostus lactone, were isolated from Saussurea lappa roots, which had exhibited a wide range of biological activities such as anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, antiulcer, and immunomodulatory activities. High-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) was applied for the rapid preparative isolation of sesquiterpenes lactones from <...

Insulin plant (Costus pictus) is one of the folk medicines used for the treatment for Diabetes mellitus. This plant belongs to Costaceae family, which has been separated from Zingiberaceae on the basis of the presence of spirally arranged leaves and rhizomes being free from aromatic essential oils. The plant commonly known as spiral ginger is originated in Mexico and is found to have antidiabet...

The phylogenetic relationships of Costaceae, a tropical monocotyledonous family sister to the gingers (Zingiberaceae), were investigated with a combination of two chloroplast loci (the trnL-F locus, including the trnL intron, the 3'trnL exon, and the trnL-F intergenic spacer, and the trnK locus, including the trnK intron and the matK coding region) and one nuclear locus (ITS1-5.8s-ITS2). The re...

Costus speciosus (Koen) J.E. Sm. Family: Zingiberaceae is an erect herbaceous plant up to 2 m high with long lanceolate leaves and white fragrant flowers in terminal clusters. The plant flowers during the months of July and August, the aerial parts withering away during the winter season. It has wide distribution in India, occurring throughout the sub-Himalayan tract from Himachal Pradesh to As...

The substitution of fish oil with wax ester-rich calanoid copepod-derived oil in diets for carnivorous fish, such as Atlantic salmon, has previously indicated a lower lipid digestibility. This suggests that the fatty alcohols (FAlc) present in wax esters may be a poorer substrate for intestinal enzymes than the fatty acids (FA) in triacylglycerol, the major lipid in fish oil. The hypothesis tes...

Oxidative stress is developed due to susceptibility of biological substrates to oxidation by generation of free radicals. In degenerative diseases, oxidative stress level can be reduced by antioxidants which neutralize free radicals. Primary objective of this work was to screen four medicinal plants, namely, Andrographis paniculata, Costus speciosus, Canthium parviflorum, and Abrus precatorius,...

Abstract Background Bisphenol A (BPA) causes environmental pollution and is used as a natural antioxidant to protect against chemical side-effects. Costus well-known medicinal plant containing several biologically active compounds. We investigated the protective effects of costus extract toxic BPA in rat testes. Results Biochemical immunohistochemical investigations revealed that bisphenol redu...

A study of the antidiabetic activity of alcohol extract of Achras zapota Linn. (Hindi-Chiku) roots, each with a dose 20, 40, 80 g/Kg body wt. (BW) given orally to rats has been conducted, using the Glucose Tolerance Test Method. The administration of alcohol extract at various doses indicated that doses equivalent to the fresh material 80g/Kg BW gave the strongest decreasing activity, followed ...

The aim of our study was to investigate the intrinsic diversity of genus based on chemical composition of natural extracts of Cacalia, Dracocephalum, Jatropha, Saussurea and Senecio. Four rarefaction approaches (richness, Shannon’s entropy, Simpson’s diversity, and max-entropy) were implemented as an algorithm and run 10,000 times. Our results showed similar patterns of richness in natural comp...