Antimutagenic potential of extracts isolated from Terminalia arjuna.

Terminalia arjuna is an important medicinal plants widely used in the preparation of Ayurvedic formulations used against several ailments. The present investigation was aimed at the fractionation of crude extracts from the bark of T. arjuna in order to isolate and purify the antimutagenic factors present. The antimutagenicity assay was performed to check the modulatory effect of these fractions against NPD, sodium azide, and 2AF, using the Ames Salmonella his+ reversion assay. Most of the phenolic fractions exhibited mutagen specificity against direct-acting mutagens, being effective in suppressing the frameshift mutagen NPD but failing to inhibit sodium azide (base pair substitution)-induced his+ revertants. ET-1 fraction triterpenoid diglycoside showed a marked effect against sodium azide but was ineffective against NPD. In the case of the indirect-acting mutagen 2AF, all the fractions were found to be quite potent in modulating its mutagenicity in both TA98 and TA100 tester strains of Salmonella typhimurium. The results indicate that the bark of T. arjuna harbors constituents with promising antimutagenic/anticarcinogenic potential that should be investigated further.