Bambusa arundinacea
(Retz.) Willd., commonly known as Kanta Bans, plays an important
ethnobotanical role, especially in Asia. In traditional medicine it has
reportedly been used for the treatment of constipation, blood-diseases,
leucodema, inflammation and urinary discharges. A number of
ethnomedicinal records exist regarding the use of B. arundinaceae shoots as a laxative,
however, there are no scientific studies reported on its laxative
activity. Therefore, the aim of this present study was to evaluate the
laxative activity of an ethanolic B. arundinaceae shoot extract in mice.

B. arundinacea
shoots were collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh in July 2015. An ethanolic
shoot extract was obtained and its laxative activity was evaluated by
faecal consistency, gastrointestinal transit and entero-pooling assays
in a mouse model. Furthermore, a phytochemical investigation of the extract was conducted by UHPLC-ESI-QqQ MS and UHPLC-ESI-Orbitrap MS analysis.

The ethanolic shoot extract of B. arundinacea
showed significant laxative activity in our mouse model, with
significant increases in (i) the amount of wet faeces, with the maximum
effect at 2 h for 500 mg/kg (47.92%), (ii) gastrointestinal transit (67.18% and 60.03% for doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg, respectively), and (iii) small intestine content at the test doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg p.o. Phytochemical investigation identified a total of thirty compounds in the ethanolic shoot extract of B. arundinacea using UHPLC-ESI-QqQ MS and UHPLC-ESI-Orbitrap MS analysis.

The results of this study provide support for the traditional use of B. arundinacea shoot as a laxative.