Chemical Composition And Antioxidant Activities Of Uyghur Medicinal Plant Artemisia Absinthium L.

Artemisia absinthium L. is a perennial herb of Compositae family, in our countryit is an important raw material for Uyghur medicine clinic drugs mainly distributed inXinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, its name in Uyghur language is'(?)'. Artemisia absinthium L. has long history of being used in Uyghurfolk medicine, therefore a significant importance in Uyghur medicine andpharmacology goes without doubt. A. absinthium is used to treat itchy skin, headacheand dizziness, paralysis weiruo, insect abdominal pain, menstrual disorders, cancer,acute bacillary dysentery, neurodegenerative disease etc. This paper will give asummarize at first to the topic in question, and then making it a base for extraction,separation and activity research on Uyghur medical plant A. absinthium. The resultsas follows:(1) At first, the method of steam distillation and organic solvent extraction wasused to extract the essential oils from Artemisia absinthium. The extraction conditionswere optimized by single factor experiment and orthorhombic analysis. The chemicalcomposition of the prepared samples were analysed by GC-MS methods. The maincontent of the essential oils extracted by steam distillation was trans-chrysanthenylacetate, palmitic acid, ar-curcumene, caryophyllene oxide and menthol etc; The maincontent of the essential oils obtained by the organic solvent extraction was1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid, dibutyl ester, linolic acid, n-tetracosane, L-(+)-ascorbicacid2,6-dihexadecanoate, nonacosane, trans-chrysanthenyl acetate and1,1'-(2-hydroxy-1,3-propanediyl) ester etc.(2) The extraction technies of flavonoids of Artemisia absinthium was studied bysing heating reflux extraction method with ethanol. The extraction conditions wereoptimized by single factor experiment and orthorhombic analysis. The optimalconditions of extraetion were as follows: the concentration of ethanol80%, theextraction time5h, the temperature80oC, the solid-liquid ratio1:25g/mL, in this condition, the total flavonoids was0.5625%.(3) Six chemical compounds were isolated by means of silica gel columnchromatography etc. The structures of compounds: absinthium lignans, quercetin,isorhamnetin-3-O-β-D-glucoside, quercetin-3-O-β-D-glucoside, quercetin-3-rutinoside and β-sitosterol were elucidated by spectroscopic methods: IR,1H NMR,13C NMR and ESI-MS.(4) Antioxidant activities of total flavonoids and seed essential oils extracted fromArtemisia absinthium were evaluated by determination of hydroxyl radical scavengingactivity, determination of DPPH radical scavenging activity and determination ofantioxidant activity with in vitro evaluation, while vitamin C as a standard. Theresults showed that, the hydroxyl radical-scavenging activity is: total flavone>vitamin C> seed essential oil2> seed essential oil1; All samples were tested againstDPPH radical and all of them showed aweak radical-scavenging activity; the size ofthe antioxidant activity is: vitamin C> flavonoids> volatile crude oil a> crudevolatile oil. It is clearly that, Artemisia absinthium total flavonoids and seed essentialoils show potent hydroxyl radical scavenging activities, DPPH radical scavengingactivities and antioxidant activities.