Phytochemical and pharmacological study of the ripe fruits from Ilex paraguariensis.

LAURA COGOI; RENZO MARTINO; CLAUDIA ANESINI; ROSANA FILIP

Bento Gonçalves

Simposio; XXII Simposio de plantas medicinais do Brasil; 2012

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande

Introduction: Ilex paraguariensis is a plant with antioxidant activities, related with thepresence of polyphenolic compounds. It is used to obtain the commercial product ?yerbamate?, widely consumed by population. Its fruits are often found in the commercial productbut are considered a by-product, treated as waste and discarded. The objective of thiswork was to assess the phytochemical composition of the ripe fruits and the antioxidantand antiproliferative activities of aqueous extracts in order to study their potential value asa source of ingredients to be used in food and pharmaceutical industries.Materials and methods: Methylxanthines were determined by HPLC (Filip, Phytother.Res.12, 129, 1998). Polyphenols and anthocyanins were determined byspectrophotometry (Singleton, AJEV, 16, 144, 1965; Wrolstad, Trends Food Sci Tech,2005). The antioxidant catalase (CAT) like activity was assayed (Carrillo, Life Sciences,48, 517, 1991). The antiproliferative action on a lymphoma cell line (BW5147) wasdetermined according to (Davicino, Immunopharmacol Immunotoxicol, 31, 130, 2009).Results: Data are expressed as X ± SD of the mean of three independent experimentscarried out by triplicate. Student?s ?t? test for unpaired values were used to determine thelevels of significance.The caffeine, theobromine and total polyphenols content were: (0.118 ± 0.001), (0.0125 ±0.0002) and (0.717 ± 0.001) g/100g respectively (referred to dry matter).Spectrophotometric analysis showed the presence of anthocyanins (l max at 516 nm).Aqueous extracts presented a CAT like activity (maximum response: 19 ± 2 U/ml) andantiproliferative action (EC50: 158 ± 15 μg/ml).Conclusions: The results obtained in this work suggest the potential value of the fruits ofI. paraguariensis for the development of novel products in the food and pharmaceuticalindustries.Acknowledgements: This work was supported by grant UBACYT 20020100100158 fromthe University of Buenos Aires.