In vitro bioactivities analysis of Indonesian mistletoes and selaginella herbal tea infusions

Various herbal teas are available in the market and used for health maintenance or prevention of diseases. Previous studies by our research group showed that several boiled water extracts or organic solvent extracts of Indonesian mistletoes (benalu) and organic solvents extracts of Selaginella (cakar ayam) have in vitro and/or in vivo anticancer activities[1,2,3,4,5]. Therefore the aim of our to study the in vitro bioactivities (antioxidant, antidiabetes and cytotoxicity) of these plant materials as when prepared as herbal tea infusion. Four mistletoe samples (M1; M2; M3; M4) and one sample of Selaginella (S) were used in this study. DPPH free radical scavenging activity method was used for antioxidant. Inhibition of a-glucosidase activity method was used for antidiabetes. Growth inhibition to breast cancer cell line MCF7 method was used for cytotoxicity. The results showed that all mistletoes samples showed high in vitro antioxidant, antidiabetes and cytotoxicity, whereas the Selaginella sample showed significantly lower activitiy for antioxidant (about 5x less) and about half for antidiabetes and cytotoxicity. These results suggest that for further development of functional drink, mistletoes samples showed better potential than selaginella when used as a single material in herbal tea infusion. However we should make into account the possibility of synergistic effect on bioactivities when mixtures of two or several plant materials were present in the herbal tea formulation. Currently formulation of herbal teas using various mixture of different mistletoes as well as mixture of mistletoe and Selaginella are still under investigation.