Antioxidant Fraction from Bark ofDillenia Indica

Bioactive Compounds and Health-Promoting Properties of Elephant Apple (Dillenia indica L.): A Comprehensive Review

Elephant apple (Dillenia indica L.) grows wild in Southeast Asia's forests, including in China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Elephant apples are considered essential fruit crops because of their high nutritional value, which includes high levels of vitamin C, carbohydrates, fats, fibre, protein, minerals, and fatty acids. It is important to understand the nutritional value and health benefits of elephant apples in order to increase fruit intake in people's daily diets. The present review paper focuses on elephant apple's phytochemistry, bioactive compounds, therapeutic value, and medicinal capabilities for designing and developing a wide range of food formulations. Proteins, minerals, fats, crude fibre, carbohydrates, vitamin C, tannins, malic acid, and glucose are abundant in the leaves, bark, and fruit of the elephant apple. In addition to nutritional components, many phytochemicals found in elephant apples have been identified as bioactive compounds with a broad range of biological activities, the most prominent of which are antioxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammatory properties. Overall, elephant apple is a rich, natural source of bioactive compounds with potential applications in the production of value-added foods and nutraceuticals for disease prevention and management.

Dillenia Indica Fruit Extract Suppressed Diet-induced Obesity in Rats by Down-regulating the mRNA Level of Proadipogenic Transcription Factors and Lipid Metabolizing Enzymes

Background:

Dillenia indica (Family: Dilleniaceae) is an antioxidant-rich edible fruitbearing medicinal plant. The fruit of this plant (known as elephant apple) has many uses in traditional medicine.

Objective:

By considering its antioxidant content and ameliorating effects, this study aimed to evaluate the anti-adipogenic effects of D. indica fruit extract (DIFE) on high-fat diet (HFD) fed obese rats.

Methods:

Male Wistar rats were fed with a standard diet (SD), or high-fat diet (HFD), or HFD with 100 mg/kg or 200 mg/kg or 400 mg/kg DIFE for 8 weeks. The fruit extract was given orally by feeding gavage. The body weight, liver weight, visceral fat weight, plasma lipids, and oxidative stress-related parameters were measured. The mRNA level of different adipogenesis related transcription factors, lipogenic and lipolytic enzymes was also evaluated.

Results:

Consumption of DIFE daily (400 mg/kg) for 8 weeks resulted in a significant reduction of high-fat diet-induced body weight, liver weight, visceral fat weight, total cholesterol, and LDL-cholesterol level. High-fat diet-mediated elevation of oxidative stress markers was also lowered, with a parallel augmentation of the activities of antioxidant enzymes, due to 400 mg/kg DIFE feeding. DIFE also down-regulated the mRNA level of important pro-adipogenic factors like PPARγ, LXRα, and SREBP1c which consequently downregulated the transcript levels of lipogenic enzymes: ACC, FAS, HMGCR, and DGAT. The transcript level of lipolytic enzyme, HSL was also down-regulated in 400 mg/kg DIFE-fed rats.

Conclusion:

These findings indicate that the antioxidant-rich ethanolic extract of D. indica fruit can down-regulate the gene expression of pro-adipogenic transcription factors and lipid metabolizing enzymes and thus can suppress diet-induced obesity in Wistar rat.

Therapeutic Benefit of Dillenia indica in Diabetes and Its Associated Complications

Diabetes, a metabolic disorder characterized by elevated fasting blood glucose levels, affects nearly 8% of the world population and was predicted that it would be the top seven leading cause of death in the next ten years. The incidence of diabetes and its morbidity are increasing rapidly in developing countries due to lifestyle change and intake of high-calorie diet occurring with urbanization. Medicinal plants and their products have been proven to be effective, less expensive, and safe for the treatment and prevention of diabetes. Although several medicinal plants known for the antidiabetic property are reported in the ancient medical textbook, there is always a scope to identify and validate less explored medicinal plants that are still practiced regularly by local and tribal people since ancient times. Here, in the present article, we would like to review a less explored medicinal plant, Dillenia indica, which has promising effects in treating diabetes and other diabetic-associated complications. In spite of its wide use in the Northeast region of India as traditional medicine, there is only one clinical study where the antidiabetic potential of the fruit powder has been shown. Further well-designed animal and human studies are needed to confirm the role of Dillenia indica in diabetes and its associated complications.

Design, development and performance evaluation of elephant apple core cutter

In this study a hand operated elephant apple cutter was developed and the machine parameters (capacity, machine efficiency, and loss percentage, etc.) were studied. The cost and performance of the designed cutter was compared to that of the traditional cutter. The comparative performance evaluation of the designed cutter with that of traditional method indicates that the cutter offered higher sepal yield (82.73 ± 1.5%) and capacity (100-120 kg h^-1) than the traditional cutter offered sepal yield (63.01 ± 3.3.4%) and capacity (12-15 kg h^-1) with uniform coring of the finished product. The cutter could process around 235-240 number of fruits against around 30-35 by traditional in a time period of 1 h. Core cutter can be used by the farmers or rural entrepreneurs for elephant apple processing and value addition for commercial and therapeutic applications.

Medicinal uses, chemistry and pharmacology of Dillenia species (Dilleniaceae)

The genus Dillenia is comprised of about 100 species of evergreen and deciduous trees or shrubs of disjunct distribution in the seasonal tropics of Madagascar through South and South East Asia, Malaysia, North Australia, and Fiji. Species from this genus have been widely used in medicinal folklore to treat cancers, wounds, jaundice, fever, cough, diabetes mellitus, and diarrhea as well as hair tonics. The plants of the genus also produce edible fruits and are cultivated as ornamental plants. Flavonoids, triterpenoids, and miscellaneous compounds have been identified in the genus. Their extracts and pure compounds have been reported for their antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, cytotoxic, antidiabetes, antioxidant, antidiarrheal, and antiprotozoal activities. Mucilage from their fruits is used in drug formulations.