ANTI-ANXIETY SCREENING OF ETHANOLIC EXTRACT'S OF CITRULLUS COLOCYNTHIS LEAVES USING MICE

Anxiety disorders are among the most general mental, emotional, and behavioral problems affecting one-eighth of the total population worldwide, and have become a very important area of research interest in psychopharmacology. Anxiety represents a heterogenous group of disorders, probably with no single unifying etiology; various psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive, genetic and biological theories have been proposed to explain the etiology of anxiety disorders. It is reported to have increasing prevalence in recent cohorts in many countries and to have much earlier ages of onset than other commonly occurring chronic conditions². Anxiety disorders affect performance impairments on numerous tasks and are combine with high rates of medically unexplained symptoms, increased utilization of healthcare, strongly and independently combine with chronic medical illnesses, low levels of quality of life and disability. Pharmacologic treatment of anxiety through the ages has included different drugs. The first class of drugs developed (barbiturates) was highly effective, unfortunately, the barbiturates can cause respiratory arrest & have a narrow therapeutic index.⁵ The benzodiazepines were developed as a safer alternative to barbiturates, however, their beneficial effects are very shadowed by the emergence of physical & psychological dependence & withdrawal reactions. More drugs used for treatment of anxiety having unfavorable side-effect profiles include buspirone, antidepressants and beta-blockers.

The results obtained in the present study conclude that the Citrullus colocynthisethanolic extract has a potent anti-anxiety activity which may be attributed due to the presence of secondary metabolites like antioxidants, alkaloids, phenols, etc. Further investigation are needed to identify and isolate the active constituent for studying mechanism of action and identifying main chemical constituent responsible for anti-anxiety activity.