ShantaSheela Nagarajan, Balachandru Velmurugan, Sabeetha Ravichandran, Subalakshmi Tiruppathi, Sneha Mariyappan and Vishnupriya Murali

Nyctanthes arbor-tristis Linn is a rare known plant belonging to the family Oleaceae also referred to as parijat or night-flowering jasmine. To give a comprehensive view of the plant's therapeutic potential and research gaps, this review compiles the phytochemical diversity and pharmacological activities documented for various plant parts, including leaves, flowers, seeds, and stem bark. Numerous iridoid glycosides, including arbortristosides, nyctanthosides, and flavonoids, including quercetin, kaempferol derivatives, rutin, and astragalin, as well as phenolic acids, lignans, terpenoids, including oleanolic and ursolic acid, and carotenoids, particularly the flower pigment "nyctanthin," are consistently found in phytochemical analyses. Extracts and purified compounds have anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, analgesic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anthelmintic, antimalarial, hepatoprotective, anti-arthritic, immunomodulatory, and anticancer activities. Mechanistic effects of this plant extract include down-regulation of COX-2 and attenuation of NF-κB and MAPK signalling, modulation of pro-anti-inflammatory cytokines, enhancement of endogenous antioxidant defence mitochondrial protection, and interference with parasite life cycle stages. Initial research suggests that glycosidic constituents hydrolyse to active aglycones, which may help to explain the bioactivity, despite the lack of pharmacokinetic data. Toxicological analyses generally indicate a wide margin of safety for hydroalcoholic and aqueous extracts at standard dose ranges, despite the paucity of high-dose and chronic-exposure datasets. Methodological heterogeneity, which includes differences in plant part, harvest season, extraction solvent, and the lack of a standardised chemical profile, makes direct comparison and translational inference more challenging. Priorities for the future include developing standardised extracts using target-guided isolation and chemometric fingerprinting of marker flavonoids and iridoids to connect particular scaffolds to distinct mechanisms, followed by robust pharmacokinetics and metabolomics to elucidate bioavailability. All things considered, Nyctanthes arbor-tristis exhibits a chemically diverse repertoire with encouraging multi-target pharmacology that justifies progress towards evidence-based Phytotherapeutics.

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