Gmelina arborea Roxb. is a fast-growing species of the Verbenaceae family and used by tribal groups in India and in traditional Indian medicine. It is known as Gambhari. All parts are used for treating various ailments – roots, leaves, flowers, fruits and bark. The most effective uses are for treatment of bites and stings from scorpions and snakes

Key Chemical constituents:

• tyrosol, (+)-balanophonin (2), an 8-5′ neolignan, gmelinol (Falah et al., 2008).
• lignans such as arboreol (Govindachari et al., 1972), isoarboreol, methyl arboreol, arborone, gmelanone, gummadiol, and 7-oxodihydrogmelinol. Other keto-lignans include arborone and 7-oxo-dihydrogmelinol (Satyanarayana et al., 1986).
• the root contains an unusual sugar linked as a coumarin glycoside (Satyanarayana et al., 1985).
• iridoid glycosides (Tiwari et al. 2008) some of which are acylated (Hosny and Rosazza, 1998).

Clinical Activities

Crude extracts of the plant are said to:-

– heal wounds (Shirwaikar et al., 2003).

– an extract of the bark possess antidiabetic activity in rats (Kulkarni and Addepalli, 2009, 2011).

References

Anjaneyulu, A.S., Jaganmohan, R.K., Kameswara, R.V., Ramachandra, R.L., Subrahmanyam, C., Pelter, A., et al. (1975) The structures of lignans from Gmelina arborea. Tetrahedron. 31 pp. 127785.

Falah, S., Katayama, T., & Suzuki, T. (2008). Chemical constituents from Gmelina arborea bark and their antioxidant activity. Journal of Wood Science, 54(6), pp. 483-489

Govindachari, T.R., Parthasarathy, P.C., Dasai, H.K. (1972) Arboreol, a new lignan from Gmelina arborea. Ind. J. Chem. 10 pp. 1120–2

Hosny, M., Rosazza, J.P., (1998) Gmelinosides A-L, twelve acylated iridoid glycosides from Gmelina arborea. J. Nat. Prod. 61 pp. 734–42

Kulkarni, Y.A., Addepalli, V. (2009) Antidiabetic activity of aqueous extract of Gmelina arborea bark in rats. Altern. Ther. Health Med. 15 pp. 183–4.

Kulkarni, Y.A., Addepalli, V. (2011). Effect of Gmelina arborea extract in STZ induced type I diabetic rats. FASEB J. 25 pp. 805–9.

Nadkarni, K.M. (2000) India: Popular Prakashan. Indian Materia Medica; pp. 584–5

Satyanarayana, P., Koteswara, R., Ward, R.S., Pelter, A. (1986) Arborone and 7-oxo-dihydrogmelinol: Two new keto-lignans from Gmelina arborea. J. Nat. Prod. 49 pp. 10614.

Satyanarayana, P., Subrahmanyam, P., Kasai, R., Tanka, O. (1985) An apiose-containing coumarin glycoside from Gmelina arborea root. Phytochemistry. 24 pp. 18623

Shirwaikar, A., Ghosh, S., Rao, P.G. (2003) Effects of Gmelina arborea Roxb. leaves on wound healing in rats. J. Nat. Rem. 3 pp. 45–8.

Tiwari, N., Yadav, A.K., Srivastava, P., Shanker, K., Verma, R.K., Gupta, M.M. (2008) Iridoid glycosides from Gmelina arborea. Phytochemistry. 69 pp. 2387–90