**6. Medicinal importance**

Corn seed kernel is commonly used as nutritional purpose, but owing to its good phytochemical composition and biological properties, it has great medicinal value. The toxicological assessment of corn at various doses against various clinical parameters has proven it clinically nontoxic and can be used for nutritional and medicinal purposes [53]. Anthocyanins in purple waxy corn have been reported to be effective against diabetic cataract [39]. Corn silk is usually discarded as waste and not used for nutritional purpose. However, it has a great medicinal importance due to the presence of valuable bioactive phytochemical compounds. It has been traditionally used as an effective herbal remedy for the treatment of hyperglycemia, diabetes, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, hyperthyroidism, rheumatism, arthritis, gout, tumors, hepatitis, heart problems, jaundice, malaria, inflammation, asthma prostatitis, cystitis, nephritis, kidney stones, bed wetting, renal conditions, and other kidney-related diseases. Corn silk is also known to be urine laxative, antihypertensive, and immune enhancer. Corn silk tea has been used as diuretic for the treatment of urinal irritation. In combination with other herbs, corn silk has been found to be effective against mumps or inflammation of the bladder. It has been also reported to be useful in gonorrhea, acute and chronic cystitis, and bladder irritation due to uric acid and phosphate gravel [11, 14, 37, 38, 42–44, 46, 47, 51, 54–59]. Recently, corn silk polysaccharides have been suggested to be a good choice as functional food or medicine for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus due to its hypoglycemic activity [60].
