The current work is carried out to investigate the skeletal muscle relaxant property of Bougainvillea glabra (400mg/kg, p.o). Rota rod model was constructed to evaluate the activity in Swiss albino mice. The animals were randomly devided into test, standard and control. The control group received distilled water, standard group received diazepam 4mg/kg and the test group received the methanol extract. The methanol extract of Bougainvillea glabra significantly reduced the fall off time (5.63 secs) compared to the fall off time of diazepam treated animals (2.55 secs). The reduced fall off time observed in Bougainvillea glabra methanol extract treated mice indicates the motor incordination on rotarod apparatus. Moreover, the preliminary phytochemical screening of the extract indicates that it possess various bioactive components like alkaloids, glycosides, flavonoids, saponins and tannins. In conclusion, the above results indicates that there is a need of identification and isolation of active constituents of methanolic extract of Bougainvillea glabra which might be responsible for the skeletal muscle relaxant activity.
