Determination of the chemical composition and in vitro antioxidant activities of essential oil and methanol extracts of Echinophora platyloba DC.Nat Prod Res. 2011 Oct; 25(17):1585-95.NP
This study was designed to examine the chemical composition and in vitro antioxidant activity of essential oil and methanol extracts of Echinophora platyloba from Iran. Gas chromatography (GC) and GC/MS (mass spectrometry; MS) analysis of the essential oil resulted in the identification of 29 compounds, which comprised 97.4% of the oil. The main constituents were found to be: (Z)-β-ocimene (26.7%), Δ-3-carene (16.2%) and limonene (6.6%). Antioxidant activities of the essential oil and the methanolic extracts from E. platyloba were evaluated using three different test systems, namely 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging, β-carotene-linoleic acid bleaching and reducing power assays. In the DPPH system, the highest radical-scavenging activity was shown by the polar sub-fraction of methanol extract (71.2 ± 1.11 µg mL(-1)). Also in the second case, the relative inhibition capacity (%) of the essential oil (68.0 ± 1.14%) was found to be the stronger one. In addition, the amounts of total phenol components in the polar sub-fractions of methanolic extract (67.5 ± 0.48 µg mg(-1)), nonpolar sub-fractions of methanol extract (35.3 ± 0.12) and the oil (83.3 ± 0.24 µg mg(-1)) were determined.