Phytochemical Profile and Therapeutic Potential of Acalypha indica: A Critical Review
Akash Amulpandi
*
Department of Agriculture, Kalasalingam School of Agriculture and Horticulture, Kalasalingam Academy of research and education, Krishnankovil, Srivilliputhur, Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, India.
K. Santhosh
Master of Technology – Food Process Technology, NIFTEM, Thanjavur, India.
M. Jayanthi
Department of Agriculture, Kalasalingam School of Agriculture and Horticulture, Kalasalingam Academy of research and education, Krishnankovil, Srivilliputhur, Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, India.
K. Santhanakrishnan
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, PERI College of Pharmacy, Chennai, India.
G. Nithish
B.Tech Biotechnology, Sastra Deemed to be University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India.
P. Sivaprakash
Food Plant operations, Advanced Institute for integrated research on livestock and animal sciences, Tamil Nadu, India.
Raguraman Dinesh
Department of Food Technology, Manakula Vinayagar Institute of Technology, Puducherry, India.
Anitha
Adhiyamaan College of Agriculture and Research, Krishnagiri, India.
P. Jayyanth Kaarthik
VIT School of Agricultural Innovations and Advanced Learning, VIT, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
P.E.S Thejan
Department of Soil Science and agricultural chemistry, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, India.
S. Kavimugilan
Department of Entomology, Rani Lakshmi Bai Central Agricultural University, Jhansi, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Acalypha indica L. (Euphorbiaceae), commonly known as Indian copperleaf or Indian nettle, is a pantropical herbaceous weed with a long-standing presence in Ayurvedic, Siddha and African ethnomedical systems. Despite its taxonomic obscurity and its frequent dismissal as nothing more than a roadside weed, the species has attracted sustained scientific attention because of an unusually diverse phytochemical repertoire that includes cyanogenic pyridone glucosides, flavonol glycosides, tannins, a pyranoquinolinone alkaloid, sterols and a range of volatile constituents. This critical review synthesises the phytochemical and pharmacological literature on A. indica published over roughly the past two decades, setting recent computational and nanotechnological studies against the longer arc of ethnopharmacological validation that the plant has undergone. The principal bioactive classes are catalogued, and the evidence underlying its antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, anticancer, wound-healing, antiasthmatic, neuroprotective and antiparasitic properties is weighed with explicit attention to methodological rigour, extract standardisation and the gap that still separates in vitro promise from in vivo, let alone clinical, confirmation. The toxicological literature, including clinical reports of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase-related haemolysis and methaemoglobinaemia following ingestion, is examined to put the plant's dual identity — remedy and hazard at once — into proper context. Emerging applications in green nanoparticle synthesis and in silico drug discovery, including docking studies implicating compounds such as corilagin, are discussed as promising but still preliminary lines of work. The review concludes that A. indica possesses a biologically plausible and reproducibly demonstrated multi-target pharmacological profile, but that the field remains held back by inconsistent extract characterisation, an almost complete absence of controlled human trials, and insufficient attention, in much of the pharmacological literature, to the cyanogenic risk inherent in raw plant material. Priorities for future work — standardisation, pharmacokinetic characterisation and properly designed clinical evaluation — are set out in closing.
Keywords: Acalypha indica, Euphorbiaceae, cyanogenic glycoside, acalyphin, ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry, antioxidant activity, green nanoparticle synthesis