Total Phenolic, Total Flavonoid and Antioxidant Activity of Euonymus fortunei by HPLC-Based Analysis

Abstract

Euonymus fortunei (Turcz.) Hand.-Mazz., belonging to the genus of Euonymus, has been used in folk medicine to treat traumatic injury and improve immunity system 1 . E. fortunei leaves were made for a healthy tea used in some ethnic minority areas in Guangxi, China. Recent studies revealed that the extracts of E. fortunei could inhibit non-enzymatic lipid peroxidation and some phenolic compounds (polyphenols, tannins, phenolic acids and flavonoids) were isolated and identified from the cane part 2,3 . In our previous work, six flavonoid glycosides were isolated from the ethanol extract of E. fortunei 4 . Two compounds, namely kaempferol-3,7-O-α-dirhamnopyranoside and kaempferol-3-(4"-O-acetyl)-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside-7-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside, were proved as the major class of constituents, with high contents of 0.03-0.54 and 0.12-0.67 mg/g, respectively 5 . Phenolic compounds are known to act as antioxidants and flavonoids are one of the most important phenolic compounds with radical scavenging properties 6 . These suggested that E. fortunei might have important antioxidant properties.However, to the best of our knowledge, data on the antioxidant properties of E. fortunei extracts are scarce. In