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In vitro antioxidant and free radical scavenging activity of four Alkanna species growing in Iran

1, 1, 1, 1★★ Corresponding author

  1. 1Departments of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran

CORRESPONDENCE

Hamid Reza Monsef Esfahani

Departments of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran

monsefes@tums.ac.ir

Volume 7, Issue 1 · pp. 100-104 · 2014 · DOI: 10.4103/0974-8490.147218

ABSTRACT

Medicinal plants are recognized as sources of natural antioxidants that can protect biological system from oxidative stress. In this study, the antioxidant activities of four species of the Alkanna genus (Alkanna bracteosa, Alkanna frigida, Alkanna orientalis and Alkanna tricophila) were evaluated. The dried roots of plant samples (100 g) were extracted separately by percolation method with MeOH/H2O (80/20) and four fractions were provided respectively with hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, butanol and water. Antioxidant activities were investigated by using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl, ferric thiocyanate and thiobarbituric acid methods and compared with quercetin (as positive control). The results indicated that the butanol fractions of four species had the highest antioxidant activity and radical scavenging activity compared with the other fractions studied (P 0.05) between the total antioxidant activities of same fractions. The total antioxidant activity values of Alkanna fractions in a descending order are as follows: Butanol fraction > ethyl acetate fraction > total extract > hexane fraction > chloroform fraction > aqueous fraction. The antioxidant activities of butanol fractions of samples were higher than quercetin. This may be because most of the active compounds of Alkanna species dissolved in the butanol.

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    Salimikia, I., Yazdinezhad, A. R., Golfakhrabadi, F., & Esfahani, H. R. M. (2014). In vitro antioxidant and free radical scavenging activity of four Alkanna species growing in Iran. Pharmacognosy Research, 7(1), 100-104. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-8490.147218

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    © 2014 Author(s)

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0