Cassiae semen: A review of its phytochemistry and pharmacology

Dong, Xiaoxv; Fu, Jing; Yin, Xingbin; Yang, Chunjing; Zhang, Xin; Wang, Wenping; Du, Xueying; Wang, Qingling; Ni, Jian

In addition, ethyl acetate fraction and n-butanol fraction of Cassiae semen were evaluated by DPPH radical scavenging activity. The results revealed that the ethyl acetate fraction had a lower IC 50 value of 56.4 g/ml, when compared with the value of 80.6 g/ml for n-butanol fraction. 1-Desmethylaurantio-obtusin (compound 11) exhibited good scavenging activity on DPPH with an IC 50 value of 4.5±0.7 g/ml, while aurantio-obtusin-6-Oβ-D-glucopyranoside (compound 34) and questin (compound 10) exhibited moderate antioxidant activity, and their IC 50 values were 103.2±1.5 g/ml and 185.2±1.8 g/ml, respectively. When compared with these results, chryso-obtusin (compound 7) and aurantio-obtusin (compound 8) demonstrated weaker antioxidant activity (IC 50 >200 µg/ml) (98) . The methanolic extract of C. tora seeds exhibited a high antioxidant activity on lipid peroxidation (99) . Similarly, in another study, Yen et al (12) demonstrated that the methanolic extract of C. tora seeds exerted a greater antioxidant activity than the other organic solvents (n-hexane and ethyl acetate). Emodin was also revealed to be an antioxidative component (12) . In addition, alaternin (compound 17), cassiaside (compound 52) and rubrofusarin-6-O-β-D-gentiobioside (compound 49) isolated from C. tora seeds exhibited good scavenging activity against DPPH radicals with IC 50 values of 17.59, 32.52 and 18.04 µg/ml, respectively (100).