An integrated investigation on taro vegetable (Colocasia gigantea Hook.f.) to ascertain its ethnomedicinal importance: insights into prospective phytochemicals regulating analgesic, antidiabetic, and cytotoxic actions

Colocasia gigantea Hook.f., locally known as ‘Kochu’ in Bangladesh, is an edible vegetable with multi-diversified health benefits. This study aimed to validate the traditional use of Colocasia gigantea as an analgesic, antidiabetic, and cytotoxic agent. In vitro brine shrimp lethality bioassay showed an LC₅₀ of 2.49 µg/mL, expressing its cytotoxic candidacy. Besides, in vivo glucose-induced hypoglycemic test showed a 52.23% decrease in blood glucose level after 3 hours of extract administration at 200 mg/kg-b.w. dose. Again, in vivo analgesic activity test deciphered 40.70% and 53.48% inhibition of writhing at 200 and 400 mg/kg-b.w. doses respectively. Besides, phytochemical screening followed by GC-MS analysis revealed thirty-eight (38) notable phytochemical groups and different bioactive phytochemicals. During thermodynamic analysis, C1 and C37 demonstrated a deficient free energy of -1489.288 and -1237.529 Hartree, respectively. In orbital analysis, C14 demonstrated the most favorable HOMO energy level at -7.672 eV. In contrast, C16 exhibited the lowest LUMO energy value at -2.054 eV. The HOMO-LUMO energy gap varied across the compounds, with C14 displaying the smallest gap of 5.275 eV. Besides, molecular docking analysis showed high binding affinity for corresponding receptors ranging from -8.4 to -4.1 kcal/mol for identified compounds. ADME/T predictions also resulted in auspicious outcomes, indicating their safety and drug-likeliness profile.