Title

Molecular docking analysis of aldose reductase with herbal compounds from selected siddha medicine for anti-cataract treatment

Authors

Vinodini Ramamoorthy^1,*, Saraswathi Balasubramanian², Siva Annamalai¹, Deepa Ravichandran², Vinu Bharathi Balasubramaniam² & Shunmugaram Shenbagaraj¹

Affiliation

¹Department of Clinical Research, Siddha Regional Research Institute, Central Council Research in Siddha, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India, Kuyavarpalayam, Puducherry, India; ²Department of Clinical, Siddha physician, Om Muruga Siddha clinic, Thanjavur, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Vinodini Ramamoorthy - E - mail: vinodini02@gmail.com
Saraswathi Balasubramanian - E - mail: saraswathi27vinoth@gmail.com
Siva Annamalai - E - mail: raimrtcsrri@gmail.com
Deepa Ravichandran - E - mail: dr.deeparavi04@gmail.com
Vinu Bharathi Balasubramaniam - E - mail: vinujuny21@gmail.com
Shunmugaram Shenbagaraj - E - mail: dr.s.s.ram28@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received March 1, 2025; Revised March 31, 2025; Accepted March 31, 2025, Published March 31, 2025

Abstract

Cataracts are a major cause of blindness and it is due to protein aggregation in the eye lens that is accelerated by aldose reductase (AR)-induced sorbitol accumulation. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate the anti-cataract potential of six phytochemicals from Siddha medicinal herbs (carinol, voacangine, berberine, piperine, sesamin and isoamericanin A) using molecular docking analysis with human aldose reductase (PDB ID: 4GCA) where epalrestat is used as the standard compound. Analysis shows that berberine, piperine, sesamin and carinol have optimal binding interactions with aldose reductase, performing similar to the standard drug epalrestat having estimated free energy values of -10.37 kcal/mol and -10.13 kcal/mol, respectively for further consideration. Thus, the traditional use of these herbs in Siddha medicine as a potential, affordable and non-surgical cataract-preventative agent is shown.

Keywords

Cataract, kan noigal, siddha medicine, eye diseases, epalrestat

Citation

Ramamoorthy et al. Bioinformation 21(3): 559-566 (2025)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.