A biological active artificial saliva formulation containing flower mucilage from Ceylon Spinach (Basella alba Linn.)

Ceylon Spinach (Basella albe) is an edible perennial vine found in tropical Asia and Africa, known as vegetables containing mucilage. Its mucilage from flowers was extracted by microwaving and precipitated with 95% ethanol. Five artificial saliva formulations composing of mucilage from Ceylon Spinach, calcium chloride (CaCl₂), potassium chloride (KCl) and sodium fluoride (NF) were developed. The best formulation No.5 containing 0.61% of the mucilage with the non-Newtonian pseudoplastic flow (8.9 ± 0.2 cP) and the wetting time (12.50 ± 2.24 min) similar to the normal human saliva was selected. This artificial saliva formulation exhibited biological activities including an antioxidative activity by DPPH free radical scavenging with the SC₅₀ of 14.26 ± 2.00 mg/ml (0.05 folds of ascorbic acid), and the adhesion inhibition of S. mutans on hydroxyapatite beads at 17.01 ± 7.75%, while the natural human saliva exhibited an increase bacterial adhesion of 33.10 ± 9.70%. The safety of this formulation which gave no cytotoxicity on normal human gingival fibroblasts at 99.20 ± 21.09% cell viability was also demonstrated. The results from this study have indicated high biological activity and safety of the developed formulation containing mucilage from Ceylon Spinach which is potential to be used as artificial saliva for xerostomia patients.