Separation and identification of bioactive compounds inAnabasis articulata(Forsk) Moq. roots

Abstract

In the present paper, for the first time, we are interested to separate and identify some bioactive fractions isolated from the roots of a Saharan plant Anabasis articulata, which is widely used in traditional medicine against cancer. The crude methanolic extract of the roots was fractionated on column chromatography, and eluted with dichloromethane/methanol each time with increasing polarity of methanol; 17 fractions were separated. One of these fractions named F12 showed more antioxidant activity to scavenge DPPH free radical with percentage inhibition of 95.29%. F12 was separated by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) to give 12 compounds. A second preparative TLC of compound 2, which has antioxidative activity of 74.92%, provided the three phenolic acids M1, M2 and M3, analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography and UV-visible spectrophotometry.

Pharmacological Properties of Four Plant Species of the Genus Anabasis, Amaranthaceae

“…Methanol and ethyl acetate extracts of Anabasis articulata also show good antioxidant properties. The IC 50 of methanol extracts (3.200 ± 0.088 mg/mL) has been reported to show good DPPH radical scavenging activity in contrast to the ethanol extract (4.9 mg/mL) [56]. This value remains more or less comparable to that of ascorbic acid (5 mg/mL) and lower than that of quercetin (5.9 mg/mL) [57].…”