**8.1 Antidiarrheal activity**

**Figure 3a** and **b** shows the biological importance of *A. marmelos* for the treatment of various diseases. The powder form of *A. marmelos* fruit is similarly effective as its fresh form. Ripe or unripe fruit is useful for the treatment diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery due to its antiprotozoal activity and also useful for treatment of constipation. In chronic dysentery, it helps to reduce bleeding, and stool loosens [57–59]. The crude aqueous extract of *A. marmelos* fruit has been reported to be nonmutagenic to *Salmonella typhimurium* strain TA 100 in the Ames assay [18]. Over 35 strains of bacteria that cause diarrhea, *Vibrio cholera*, *Escherichia coli*, and *Shigella sp* are effectively inhibited by ethanolic extract of fruit [5, 60]. Recent research studies focused on the improvement of efficiency of medicines made of *A. marmelos* for diarrhea and dysentery, and it has been observed that the chloroform extract of bael root can perform same functionality as Ciprofloxacin with the advantage of no side effects [61].

*In vitro* and *in vivo* studies of *A. marmelos* make it more effective and provide economic feasibility for medication. The unripe fruit pulp of *A. marmelos* shows effective potential activity over enterotoxins and also responsible for preventing the formation of gut epithelium colony [61]. Antidiarrheal activity of *A. marmelos* is not only shown by unripe fruit pulp but also by leaf, juice, and water extract of unripe fruit, and it can be observed as minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) method [62–65]. Astringent properties of tannin present in *A. marmelos* functionalize nicely over diarrhea [66, 67]. It has been observed in Ames assay that *A. marmelos* can show nonmutagonic behavior to *S. typhimurium* strain TA100 [68, 69]. Hydroalcoholic extract of fruit is found to be nontoxic within the dose of 6 g/kg in mice [70]. It has been reported in pharmacological studies over animals that no adverse effect found after giving same dose of *A. marmelos* fruit extract for 30 days in which the maximum dose is 250 mg/kg of the body weight [53, 70, 71]. *A. marmelos* has its antigardial effect from decoction of unripe fruit [69]. Colonization studies of *E.coli* B170*, E. coli* E 134, and *Shigella flexneri* reported that colonization can be decreased by inhibiting bacterial entry [69]. The experiment of unripe fruit extracts over albino rats with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) shows that it is very effective to reduce the intestinal inflammation. The reduction of intestinal inflammation of albino rat by the action of inflammatory mediators present in unripe *A. marmelos* fruit extract, and these are Interleukin 1, Interleukin 6, Interleukin 8, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) [72]. The unripe fruit extract can also prevent intestinal mortality and secretion, which is an effective indicator of antidiarrheal action [73].
