Antioxidant and Anti-diabetic Potential of Nutraceutical Rich Amaranthus caudatus

Wild medicinal herbs are currently being viewed as alternative food sources with potential health benefits, and are mostly used as vegetables in several parts of the world. One such ignored wild medicinal herb Amaranthus caudatus, an underutilized vegetable from Kashmir region is believed to be highly nutritional and quite health beneficial, but is fully unexplored. Therefore, the aim of the current investigation was to investigate the phytochemical composition, antioxidant activity and antidiabetic potential of this wild vegetable under in vitro conditions. The phyochemical composition of aqueous extracts of Amaranthus caudatus (AAE) revealed it to be a rich source of total phenols (545±0.003mg/100g) and total flavonoids (127±0.02mg/100g). The AAE also exhibited strong antioxidant activity (73±0.04μmolFe 2+ FRAP/g FW) and dose dependent in vitro antidiabetic activity. The antidiabetic mode action of AAE seemed to be via targeting the key enzymes of carbohydrate metabolism with mild inhibition of α-amylase, strong inhibition of α-glucosidase and moderate inhibition of invertase activities respectively. These findings of current study are quite encouraging and suggest that the aqueous extract of Amaranthus caudatus can be better exploited to be used as nutraceutical rich antioxidant supplement as well as to suppress post-prandial glucose rise and can thus play a role as anti hyperglycemic food based medicine for diabetic patients.