Abstract
BackgroundNeptunia oleracea is a plant cultivated as vegetable in Southeast Asia. Previous works have revealed the potential of this plant as a source of natural antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors. Continuing our interest on this plant, the present work is focused in identification of the bioactive compounds from different polarity fractions of N. oleracea, namely hexane (HF), chloroform (CF), ethyl acetate (EF) and methanol (MF).MethodsThe N. oleracea fractions were obtained using solid phase extraction (SPE). A metabolomics approach that coupled the use of proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) with multivariate data analysis (MVDA) was applied to distinguish the metabolite variations among the N. oleracea fractions, as well as to assess the correlation between metabolite variation and the studied bioactivities (DPPH free radical scavenging and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities). The bioactive fractions were then subjected to ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS) analysis to profile and identify the potential bioactive constituents.ResultsThe principal component analysis (PCA) discriminated EF and MF from the other fractions with the higher distributions of phenolics. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis revealed a strong correlation between the phenolics and the studied bioactivities in the EF and the MF. The UHPLC-MS/MS profiling of EF and MF had tentatively identified the phenolics present. Together with some non-phenolic metabolites, a total of 37 metabolites were tentatively assigned.ConclusionsThe findings of this work supported that N. oleracea is a rich source of phenolics that can be potential antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors for the management of diabetes. To our knowledge, this study is the first report on the metabolite-bioactivity correlation and UHPLC–MS/MS analysis of N. oleracea fractions.
Highlights
IntroductionPrevious works have revealed the potential of this plant as a source of natural antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors
Neptunia oleracea is a plant cultivated as vegetable in Southeast Asia
The signals of three phenolic acids were observed in these fractions. These flavonoids and phenolic acids are the metabolites that were identified in previous works to be potential and important antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors in N. oleracea [11, 12]
Summary
Previous works have revealed the potential of this plant as a source of natural antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors. Continuing our interest on this plant, the present work is focused in identification of the bioactive compounds from different polarity fractions of N. oleracea, namely hexane (HF), chloroform (CF), ethyl acetate (EF) and methanol (MF). Diabetes mellitus is a metabolically complicated disease in which the patient experiences a high blood glucose level. The impaired glucose metabolism leads to excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), enhances oxidative stress in the body and leads to complications such as cardiovascular disease, retinopathy, nephropathy and impaired wound healing. One of the therapeutic approaches for diabetes management is to slow down the absorption of postprandial glucose by inhibiting carbohydrate hydrolyzing enzymes, such as α-glucosidase [2].
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