Anthocephalus cadamba as a Potential Functional Food and Nutraceutical Source

Abstract

Herbal nutraceuticals are a recently evolved category of food and supplementary food, seeking great attention of both pharmaceutical and nutritional companies, resulting in proliferation of numerous value-added products aimed to provide twin effect of nutritional and clinical health benefits. Anthocephalus cadamba, a sanctified epical evergreen tree gain momentous amongst the wide array of medicinal prerequistic plants due to treasuries of minerals, phytochemicals and/or secondary metabolites which are accountable for prominent clinical manifestations along with nutritional allowance. Multifactorial in vitro and in vivo studies provide explicable evidences about its nontoxicity and antimicrobial, anticancerous, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, diuretic, laxative and lipid lowering activities along with their ethnomedical acquaintances. This review paper is devoted towards better understanding of the nutraceutical aspects of A. cadamba plant based on its phytoconstituents and disease-specific indications which makes it vulnerable for researchers to deliberate about its better exploitage and to understand reasonable molecular mechanism behind the scene.