Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2011, Article ID 965370, 6 pages doi:10.1093/ecam/nep091 Original Article Eleucine indica Possesses Antioxidant, Antibacterial and Cytotoxic Properties Adel S. Al-Zubairi,1, 2 Ahmad Bustamam Abdul,1, 3 Siddig Ibrahim Abdelwahab,1 Chew Yuan Peng,3 Syam Mohan,1 and Manal Mohamed Elhassan1 1 Laboratory of Cancer Research MAKNA-UPM, Institute of Biosciences (IBS), Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor DE 43400, Malaysia 2 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Sana’a, Sana’a, Yemen 3 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor DE, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Ahmad Bustamam Abdul, abustamam@putra.upm.edu.my Received 21 January 2009; Accepted 25 June 2009 Copyright © 2011 Adel S. Al-Zubairi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The use of evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine is increasing rapidly. Eleucine indica (EI) is traditionally used in ailments associated with liver and kidneys. The therapeutic beneﬁt of the medicinal plants is often attributed to their antioxidant properties. Therefore, the aim of this study was to screen the hexane, dicholoromethane, ethyl acetate (EA) and methanol extracts (MeTH) of EI for their antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-cancer eﬀects using total phenolic contents (TPCs) and DPPH, disc diﬀusion method and MTT cytotoxicity assays, respectively. The MeTH was showed to have the highest TPC and scavenging activity (77.7%) on DPPH assay, followed by EA (64.5%), hexane (47.19%) and DCM (40.83%) extracts, whereas the MeTH showed no inhibitory eﬀect on all tested bacteria strains. However, the EA extract exhibited a broad spectrum antibacterial activity against all tested bacteria except Bacillus subtilis, in which this bacterium was found to be resistant to all EI extracts. Meanwhile, hexane extract was demonstrated to have a remarkable antibacterial activity against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, while the dicholoromethane extract did not exhibit signiﬁcant activity against P. aeruginosa. None of the extracts showed signiﬁcant cytotoxic activity towards MCF-7, HT-29 and CEM-SS human cancer cell lines after 72 h incubation time (IC50 > 30 µg/ml). These results demonstrate that the extract prepared from the EI possesses antioxidant activity in vitro in addition to antibacterial properties. Further investigations are needed to verify the antioxidant eﬀects in vitro and in vivo. 1. Introduction Eleucine indica (Poaceae) (EI) or goosegrass, generally con- sidered an adventitious species, is native in the tropics and subtropical regions [1]. Goosegrass has a broad tolerance to a wide range of environmental conditions, but its vegetative growth is signiﬁcantly reduced during dry seasons [2, 3]. The whole plant, especially the root, is depurative, diuretic, febrifuge and laxative, and hence is used for the treatment of inﬂuenza, hypertension, oliguria and urine retention. The plant has been the component of “basic remedy” in Vietnamese traditional medicine [2, 3] and also used for kidney problems in Trinidad and Tobago [4]. The seed is sometimes used as a famine food and also used in the treatment of liver complaints. Many herbal products, such as the one studied in this article, have traditional uses that are now being investigated to create an evidence base that will facilitate their inclusion in general medical practice. Plants produce a higher number of naturally occurring secondary metabolites, many of them with unique pharma- cologic activities. These metabolites include the ﬂavonoids, phenols and phenolic glycosides, saponins, cyanogenic gly- cosides, unsaturated lactones and glucosinolates [5–8]. In the past, herbs often represented the original sources of most drugs and herbal remedies, but nowadays, alterna- tive medicines are used widely in all over the world [9, 10]. Herbal-derived remedies need a powerful and deep assessment of their pharmacological qualities [11]. With