Chemical characterization, antioxidant and antibacterial activities of six Agave species from Sinaloa, Mexico

Saponins of Agave: Chemistry and bioactivity

“…All four Agave extracts were active against the tested fungal species (Verastegui et al, 2008). Similar studies established the antimicrobial potential of extracts of A. lecheguilla, A. rzedowskiana, A. impressa, A. ornithobroma, A. schidigera, A. tequilana and A. sisalana (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013;Santos et al, 2009;Verastegui et al, 1996). Yang et al (2006) have also evaluated the antifungal activity of 28 steroidal compounds, including 6 sapogenins and 12 saponins reported from Agave species.…”

“…The primary metabolites include carbohydrates (Mellado-Mojica and Lopez, 2015;Soto et al, 2013) and processed Agave syrups are increasingly recognized as natural sweeteners, functional foods and prebiotics (AvilaFernandez et al, 2011;Mellado-Mojica and Lopez, 2015;NavaCruz et al, 2014). Agave plants contain secondary metabolites of diverse classes, such as steroidal sapogenins and saponins, sterols (Hernandez-Valle et al, 2014), flavonoids (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013;Almaraz-Abarca et al, 2013;Barriada-Bernal et al, 2013;Hammuel et al, 2011), homoisoflavonoids (Morales-Serna et al, 2010;Tinto et al, 2005), phenolic acids , tannins (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013;Hammuel et al, 2011), volatile coumarins (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013), long chain alkanes, fatty acids and alcohols (Morales-Serna et al, 2010;Rizwan et al, 2012;Tinto et al, 2005). Steroidal sapogenins and saponins are perhaps the most widely studied compounds in this genus and also the focus of this review.…”

“…Most ethnopharmacological uses of these plants can be attributed to their antimicrobial and antioxidant activities (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013;Santos-Zea et al, 2012). These plants are used in the treatment of gastrointestinal and urological disorders, dysentery, wound infections, cancer, hypertension and diabetes (Cornara et al, 2009;Duncan et al, 1999;Semenya et al, 2012).…”

“…Ahumada- Santos et al (2013) have investigated the antioxidant activity of six Agave species growing in Mexico. The wild species included A. rzedowskiana, A. impressa, A. ornithobroma and A. schidigera and the cultivated species was A. tequilana.…”

“…rzedowskiana showed the highest antioxidant activity (27.41 mM of Trolox equivalents per gram of dry weight) in DPPH assay (Ahumada- Santos et al, 2013). Ethanolic extract of leaves of A. sisalana showed a weak inhibition of xanthine oxidase, tyrosinase and lipoxygenase (Chen et al, 2009).…”