In Vitro Anti-Inflammatory and Antimicrobial Activities of Phenylpropanoids from Piper betle L. (Piperaceae)

Abstract

The present study evaluates the in vitro anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory activities of some phenylpropanoids isolated from Piper betle L. The study revealed that both the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activities depend on the position of the hydroxyl functionality associated with the aromatic moiety. In order to validate the usefulness of the Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) assay as a tool for the screening of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compounds, which is the main focus of the present investigation, 1D NMR interactions were conducted on the BSA-phenylpropanoid mixtures. The NMR data obtained revealed that the interactions were localized at two regions: (1) at 3.0–3.8 ppm, which can be assigned to lysine, an amino acid residue capable of inducing reactive oxygen species (Sadler & Tucker, 1992; Kawabata & Packer, 1994), and (2) at 6.3–7.8 ppm, a region associated with tyrosine amino acid residues, which are aimportant components (binding sites) in the receptor motifs regulating various signal transduction cascades involved in the release of important anti-inflammatory cytokines. Using these two important biochemical findings we hereby proposed a hypothesis why BSA could be a useful in vitro test system for finding natural products with anti-inflammatory properties.