ABSTRACT
Background: Information from Ayurveda meeting the analytical challenges of modern technology is anarea of immense relevance. Apart from the cerebral task of bringing together two different viewpoints,the question at the pragmatic level remains ‘who benefits whom’.Objective: The aim is to highlight the challenges in integration of information (Ayurvedic) and technology using test examples of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) metabolomics and anti-HIV-1 potential of select Ayurvedic medicinal plants. The other value added objective is implications andrelevance of such work for Ayurveda.Materials and methods: Six medicinal plants (Azadirachta indica, Tinospora cordifolia, Swertia chirata,Terminalia bellerica, Zingiber officinale and Symplocos racemosa) were studied using high resolutionproton NMR spectroscopy based metabolomics and also evaluated for anti-HIV-1 activity on threepseudoviruses (ZM53 M.PB12, ZM109F.PB4, RHPA 4259.7).Results: Of the six plants, T. bellerica and Z. officinale showed minimum cell cytotoxicity and maximumanti-HIV-1 potential. T. bellerica was effective against all the three HIV-1 pseudoviruses. Untargeted NMRprofiling and multivariate analyses demonstrated that the six plants, all of which had different Ayurvedicpharmacological properties, showed maximum differences in the aromatic region of the spectra.Conclusion: The work adds onto the list of potential plants for anti-HIV-1 drug molecules. At the sametime, it has drawn attention to the different perspectives of Ayurveda and Western medicine underscoring the inherent limitations of conceptual bilinguism between the two systems, especially in thecontext of medicinal plants. The study has also highlighted the potential of NMR metabolomics in studyof plant extracts as used in Ayurveda.© 2017 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Publishing Services byElsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).