engleski

Medicinal plants as source of stilbene compounds

Over the last years, great interest has arisen concerning plant stilbenes, a nonflavonoid group of polyphenols, due to their potential health benefits. Resveratrol is one of the most extensively studied natural products and the whole spectra of its biological activities, such as antioxidant, antitumor, antiviral, antibacterial, antiinflammatory, cardioprotective, estrogenic, etc., has been reported. In this study, we investigated the presence of several stilbenes, resveratrol monomers (trans- and cis- form) and naturally occurring derivatives of trans-resveratrol (piceid, astrignin and isorhapontin), in phenolic extracts of 20 medicinal plants traditionally used in Croatian folk medicine. The separation, identification and quantification were done using reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (HPLC-RP-DAD). Resveratrol and/or its hydroxy and methoxy derivatives were present in investigated medicinal plant extracts, in free form or as glucosides. The highest share of stilbenes, especially resveratrol monomers, was found in extract of Helichrysum italicum L. (265.88 mg/l). Among other plants, relatively high concentrations of resveratrol monomers were found in Achillea millefolium L. extract and in extracts of plants from the Lamiaceae family (from 34.48 to 82.42 mg/l). The obtained results indicate that biological activity of selected medicinal plants can be related with presence of this group of phenolics.

astrignin; HPLC; isorhapontin; medicinal plants; piceid; resveratrol; stilbenes

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