Bush medicine of the Mbabaram Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland demonstrates strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities
Turpin, Gerry, Yeshi, Karma, Crayn, Darren, Guivarra, Karen, Turpin, Valmai, Motlap, Shane, and Wangchuk, Phurpa (2025) Bush medicine of the Mbabaram Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland demonstrates strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 25 (1). 398.
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Abstract
Introduction: The Mbabaram Aboriginal community lives in Atherton Tableland of Far North Queensland, Australia. While most of the knowledge had been lost due to colonial influences, this community still has remnants of traditional biocultural knowledge, which is critically endangered. They have been closely working with the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre (Queensland Herbarium, James Cook University) in the areas of documenting traditional biocultural knowledge and biodiscovery projects. The current study investigated five medicinal plants used by the Mbabaram Aboriginal community for treating wounds, and inflammation-associated diseases. Methods: In this study, crude extracts of five medicinal plants from the Mbabaram community (Breynia oblongifolia, Cajanus reticulatus, Dodonaea lanceolata, Exocarpos latifolius, and Coleus amoenus) were assessed for their phytochemical contents. The antioxidant activity was determined using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay. Furthermore, crude extracts were evaluated for their effect on cell viability and anti-inflammatory activities using the human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) assay. Results: While some plants tested positive for flavonoids and saponins, B. oblongifolia and C. amoenus did not test positive for saponins. Only C. reticulatus and E. latifolius tested positive for alkaloids. The water extract of C. amoenus and the ethanol extract of B. oblongifolia exhibited the highest TPC with 99.88 ± 4.47 GAE/g extract and 128.36 ± 14.09 GAE/g extract, respectively. While the crude water extract of E. latifolius stems showed the best antioxidant activity with EC<inf>50</inf> value of 0.024 μg/mL, the water extract of B. oblongifolia leaf showed the best anti-inflammatory activity by significantly reducing the levels of four pro-inflammatory cytokines, namely IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF, which are known for instigating IBD pathogenesis. Conclusions: Of the five aqueous crude extracts studied here, E. latifolius stems showed the best antioxidant activity and B. oblongifolia leaf showed the best anti-inflammatory activity. This result validated the traditional uses of medicinal plants, which is used for treating inflammation-related conditions including wounds and sores. B. oblongifolia has potential to yield drug lead molecules for developing treatment for inflammation and sores/ulcers related diseases such as IBD.
| Item ID: | 89899 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2662-7671 |
| Keywords: | Anti-inflammatory, Anti-oxidant, Australia, Mbabaram Aboriginal Community, Medicinal plants, Phytochemicals, Queensland |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Funders: | National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) |
| Projects and Grants: | NHMRC APP1183323 |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2026 04:17 |
| FoR Codes: | 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4504 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing > 450402 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander biomedical and clinical sciences @ 50% 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3214 Pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences > 321405 Pharmaceutical sciences @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 21 INDIGENOUS > 2104 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture > 210404 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge @ 50% 20 HEALTH > 2001 Clinical health > 200102 Efficacy of medications @ 50% |
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