Merremia emarginata (Burm. f.) belongs to family Convolvulaceae is prevalent throughout India and tropical region of Asia. This plant is uncultivated food crop used by people in India as green leaf vegetable and creeping perennial herb rooting at the nodes.
M. emarginata traditionally used as diuretic, deobstruent, rheumatism, neuralgia, cough and headache [
1]. Previous reports suggested that
M. emarginata leaves have strong antioxidant property and antibacterial activity against both gram positive and gram negative bacterial [
2,
3].
A diuretic drug is any substance that elevates the urine excretion, they are widely used for treatment of edema, congestive heart failure, hypertension, liver and kidney diseases [
4]. Now a day’s many commercial diuretic drugs available in the market are class of thiazide (chlorothiazide, hydrochlorothiazide etc), loop (furosemide, bumetanide etc), K
+ sparing (amioloride, eplerenone etc) and CA inhibitors (acetazolamide, dichlorphenamideetc). These commercial diuretics drugs have variety of side effects such as hypokalemia, metabolic alkalosis, dehydration (hypovolemia), leading to hypotension, fever, cough, unusual bleeding, excessive weight loss, nausea, vomiting [
5]. Diuretic drugs of medicinal plants origin are a better alternative to commercial diuretic drugs. Wright et al. [
6] reported that about hundreds of medicinal plants and its extracts were successfully investigated for their diuretic property. The most successful and most potential diuretic medicinal plant genus includes
Spergularia purpurea, Petroselinum sativum, Foeniculum vulgare and
Hibiscus sabdariffa [
7‐
10]. These medicinal plants contain secondary metabolites (alkaloids, phenolics and flavonoids etc.) which might be responsible for diuretic activity [
11,
12]. But there is no previous report about specific phenolic compound and its byproduct for diuretic activity. The mechanism of medicinal plant induces diuretic activity is still unclear. Further, Kaur, [
13] reported that, cow urine containing hippuric acid responsible for induced diuretic activity. Based on this, the present study was carried out to study the diuretic activity of MEAE
. Chlorogenic acid which is one of the phenolic compounds found in MEAE and hippuric acid is a byproduct of chlorogenic acid was detected in our plant extract treated rat urine sample through RP-HPLC which indirectly reveals about the role of polyphenolics present in the plant extract in inducing diuretics.