Vikas Gupta, Parveen Bansal, Kamlesh Kohli and Pankaj Ghaiye
Persistent and unrelenting stress often leads to anxiety and unhealthy behavior. Benzodiazepines are used as a first line of treatment however difficulties with pharmacotherapy of anxiety disorders such as dependence and low response rate encourage researchers to find new approaches. A number of studies have been done on antianxiety activity of medicinal plants but major constraint is non suitability of the tested plant material for human use and non availability of plant materials in bulk at economical rates. This study entails to development of safe anti-anxiety economic drug of easy availability. In normal course aromatic oils from plant are being used however authors selected four varieties of plant Citrus paradisi available worldwide and tested the anti-anxiety activity of leaf extracts as leaf extracts can be made available at commercial scale. All the selected varieties have demonstrated a potential diazepam like effect in methanolic extracts at a dose of 100 mg/kg body weight using elevated plus maze model. The results strongly justify the use of Citrus paradisi leaf extracts for treatment of anxiety. Further studies are in progress to find out active component involved in the anti-anxiety effect.
