Abstract
Dendrobium spp. are precious medicinal plants, used in China for thousands of years as health foods and nutrients. Polysaccharides are the main effective ingredients in Dendrobium plants. In this study, the chemical characteristics and the effects of crude polysaccharides (CPs) from five species of Dendrobium on macrophage function were investigated and compared in vitro for the first time. Chemical characteristic studies showed that CPs from different species of Dendrobium were diverse, displaying widely varied Mw distributions and molar ratios of monosaccharides. Their effects on macrophage functions, such as promoting phagocytosis, release of NO and cytokines IL-1α, IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α, were also different. Moreover, CPs from D. officinale, especially collected from Yunnan Province, exerted the strongest immunomodulatory activities and could be explored as a novel potential functional food. The diverse chemical characteristics of CPs from different species of Dendrobium might contribute to their varied effects on macrophage functions, which should be further investigated.
Highlights
The genus Dendrobium is one of the largest groups of the family Orchidaceae
Among different species of Dendrobium, crude polysaccharides (CPs) from D. officinale, especially produced in Yunnan Province, exerted the strongest modulatory activities on the macrophage functions, suggesting that polysaccharides from D. officinale could be explored as novel potential immunomodulators for functional food development, which is in accordance with previous reports [15,16,23]
Our results suggested that mannose was the major component of polysaccharides from Dendrobium
Summary
The genus Dendrobium is one of the largest groups of the family Orchidaceae. There are 78 species of Dendrobium plants found in China and about 30 of them, well known as Shihu, are eaten or used as or folk medicines for antipyretic, eye-benefitting and immunoregulatory purposes [1]. Previous reports indicated that polysaccharides from different Dendrobium species obviously differed in their compositional monosaccharides [18], carbohydrase enzymatic digestion properties and profiles [19,20]. These diverse chemical characteristics of the polysaccharides from Dendrobium may be correlated with their health benefits. The effects of crude polysaccharides (CPs) from five species of Dendrobium, including D. officinale (DO), D. fimbriatum (DF), D. huoshanense (DH), D. nobile (DN) and D. chrysotoxum (DC) (Figure 1), on macrophages were investigated and compared for the first time.
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