The Dietary Use of Pigeon Pea for Human and Animal Diets

Table 5

Medicinal uses of pigeon pea seeds, leafs, and roots.

Physiological activity	Functions (roles)	References
Hypocholesterolemic effect	PP seeds, leaves, and roots have significant amounts of saponins that are important for reducing high levels of cholesterol in the blood.	[60]
Antimicrobial effect	Extracts from the leaves of PP have a considerable amount of natural antimicrobial compounds like tannins, flavonoids, and alkaloids with important antifungal properties.	[61–63]
Hypoglycemic activity	PP is among the most efficient hypoglycemic curative plants, treating diabetes and its complications with various levels of hypoglycemic activity.	[64]
Hepatoprotective effect	The protein extracts from the PP plant are able to work against liver inflammation, reduce liver injuries and disease development, and its complications.	[65–68]
Cancer prevention	In humans, the anticancer chemical derived from the roots of PP can be used to treat breast and lung cancer cells.	[69, 70]
Anti-inflammatory effect	The presence of cajaninstilbene acid only in PP leaves along with its synthesized derivatives revealed strong slowing down activities on the release of inflammatory factors.	[71, 72]
Antihyperglycemic activity	Studies on the cooked PP seeds have shown a significant reduction in blood glucose levels.	[73]
Antidyslipidemic activity	Some statistical results on PP plants showed that they have significant amounts of antidyslipidemic activity in the body.	[74]