Abstract

CUMIN: A POTENTIAL SPICE WITH NUMEROUS PHARMACOLOGICAL PROPERTIES

Subha Bose Banerjee*

ABSTRACT

Spices are important bio nutrients for both food ingredients and nutritional supplements. From ancient times, spices have been used as food additives to enhance the taste and flavour of food. And the use of spices or different herbs is increasing day by day throughout the world. Apart from these uses, spices also have numerous medicinal properties and used to treat several disorders. Cumin (Cuminumcyminum), an important spice has been used as a neutraceutical from long ago in the various countries. Cumin, a potential spice, is an annual herbaceous flowering plant belonging to family Apiaceae. It is native from the East Mediterranean to South Asia and today, grown all over the world. Apart from the culinary purposes it is now used as medicine. Phytochemical analysis showed that Cuminumcyminumcontained: alkaloid, coumarin, anthraquinone, flavonoid, glycoside, protein, resin, saponin, tannin and steroid. Various pharmacological studies revealed that Cuminumcyminumexerted antimicrobial, insecticidal, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic, antiplatelet aggregation, hypotensive, bronchodilatory, immunological, contraceptive, anti-amyloidogenic, anti-osteoporotic, aldose reductase, alpha-glucosidase and tyrosinase inhibitory effects, and protective on central nervous system etc. As the global scenario is now changing towards the use of non-toxic plant products having traditional medicinal use, a drug development programme should be undertaken and development of modern drugs from Cuminumcyminum should be emphasized for the control and prevention of various diseases. Further evaluation needs to be carried out on Cuminumcyminum in order to discover the unknown fields of its beneficial properties and possibilities of clinical applications.

Keywords: Cumin, spice, Neutraceuticals, Pharmaceuticals, Gastrointestinal, Anti-inflammatory, Antioxidant, Hypolipidemic, Immunomodulatory, Antidiabetic, Anticancer, Antimicrobial.