ORIGINAL ARTICLE e-ISSN: 2349-0659 p-ISSN; 2350-0964 Evaluation of Antihelminthic Activity of Bixa orellana Swastprava Das 1 , Sugimani Marndi 1 , Susanta Kumar Biswal 2 , Tikendrajit Baro 3 , Ramesh Singh 4 , Rajkumari Supriya Devi 2 , Rikina Choudhury 1 , Sanjeet Kumar 1 * A BSTRACT Intestinal worms are common problems in remote and rural areas of India. The communities of remote areas use some wild plants to treat intestinal worms. Among them, Bixa orellana is a monogenic plant of family Bixaceae, popularly known as lipstick tree or Annatto and locally called as Sinduri. It is traditionally used to kill the intestinal worms, results revealed that seeds of B. orellana possess diverse secondary metabolites such as tannin and phenolic compounds which might be responsible to kill the worms. Antihelminthic activity showed that seed extracts (aqueous, acetone, methanol, and ethanol) were efective against Eisenia fetida. Keeping the traditional uses of Sinduri against stomach worm and to reduce the side efects of synthetic drugs, the present experiment has been designed. Keywords: Antihelminthic activity, Intestinal worm, Secondary metabolites Asian Pac. J. Health Sci., (2021); DOI: 10.21276/apjhs.2021.8.4.46 ©2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. I NTRODUCTION Bixa orellana (Annatto) is native to Brazil but grows on other parts of South and Central America. This plant is mostly cultivated in tropical regions such as East Africa, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, India, Indonesia, and Ecuador. [1] In India, it is well distributed in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh and also cultivated as an ornamental plant as well as commercial production of seeds. [2] On the basis of fower, color, and shape of fruits, B. orellana has three varieties: One with white fowers and green capsules, second with purple fowers and brownish red capsules, and third with pink fowers and red capsules. [3] It is a bushy shrub with a height ranging from 3 to 10 m. Bark is more or less smooth with many warty lenticels and fssured when old. It has taproot systems. Leaves are ovate with round heart-shaped base and acute or acuminate apex. Petioles are swollen at the base and the apex too. Leaves are arranged in spiral manner. Leaf blade is waxy in pink fower while rough in white fowered plant. Leaves of pink fowered plant show dark red venation and pale green in purple and white fowered plants. [3] Panicle type of inforescence, fowers are actinomorphic, hermaphrodite, and hypogynous. It has fve petals with numerous stamens emerging centripetally. Petals are ovate, distinct having imbricate aestivation and dotted due to the presence of color cells. The flaments are long, very thin, and white or pink in color with basifxed, dithecous, and horseshoe-shaped anthers depending on the petal color. [3-6] The Annatto seed extract comprises many color pigments, among them bixin and norbixin are vital. Bixin is responsible for redness and norbixin for yellow color. [7] Annatto colors have huge signifcance in the food industry and it is used as a natural edible dye. It is also used as economically important natural food colorants. [8,9] Its non-food application includes textile color, [10-12] fabrics and weapons, [13,14] body paint, insect repellent, sunscreen and heart burn, and stomach distress. It was observed that the plant has been used in treating microbial infection since ancient times. [15,16] In India, the bark is used to treat fever, gonorrhea phlegm, headache, etc., [17] and there are evidences that the plant does not show any type of urogenital infections while treating gonorrhea. [18] In Central and South America, the plant is used to cure internal infammation and in Malaysia for stomach problem 1 Biodiversity and Conservation Lab., Ambika Prasad Research Foundation, Odisha, India 2 Department of Botany, School of Applied Sciences, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, India 3 Department of Biotechnology, Bodoland University, Assam, India 4 Department of Botany, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, Uttarakhand, India Corresponding Author: Sanjeet Kumar, Biodiversity and Conservation Lab., Ambika Prasad Research Foundation, Cuttack, Odisha. Email: sanjeet.biotech@gmail.com How to cite this article: Das S, Marndi S, Biswal SK, Baro T, Singh R, Devi RS, Choudhury R, Kumar S. Evaluation of Antihelminthic Activity of Bixa orellana. Asian Pac. J. Health Sci., 2021;8(4):227-232. Source of support: Nil Conficts of interest: None. Received: 25/06/21 Revised: 07/08/21 Accepted:12/09/21 and gastric ulcers. [19] The Amazon tribes of Brazil commonly used seed extracts to paint their body which also acts as insect repellent. [20] In Trinidad and Tobago, it is commonly used to treat jaundice, diabetes, and hypertension. [21] Pharmaceutical companies use Annatto as colorant for ointments and plasters. [22] It is also used as tablet coating and oral liquid drugs. [23] Annatto oil has soothing efect and its high carotenoid content ofers antioxidant benefts on body care products and aids rich sunny color to creams, lotions, and shampoos. [24] Antiapoptotic efect of T3 components of Annatto has been documented in vitro in human, mice, and tumor cell lines. Among the natural carotenoids, bixin is one of the more active biological singlet molecular oxygen quenchers and may contribute to the protection of cells tissues against harmful efects of free radicals. [25] Therefore, it is a sound antioxidant and inhibitor lipoxygenase. [26] It was noted that methylbixin has shown improvement in activity of gap junctional communication which is important in cancer prevention. [27] Methanol extract of B. orellana seeds proved hepatoprotective activity against liver damage made by carbon tetrachloride. [28] It results in decreased levels of serum makers, indicating the protection of hepatic cells. B. orellana has been used for the treatment of diabetes mellitus too. It also lowered