Abstract
In this study, chemical composition, antioxidant, anticholinesterase and anti-urease activities of the essential oil, hexane, acetone, methanol and water extracts of Euphorbia helioscopia were investigated. The chemical composition of the essential oil was analyzed by GC and GC/MS and β-cubebene (19.3 %), palmitic acid (12.2 %) and caryophyllene oxide (11.7 %) were identified as major compounds. The antioxidant activity of essential oil and extracts was performed by several methods such as β-carotene-linoleic acid, DPPH•, ABTS•+ radical scavenging, CUPRAC and metal chelating assays. The water extract showed higher antioxidant activity than BHA and α-tocopherol in β-carotene-linoleic acid, DPPH•, ABTS•+ and CUPRAC assays with IC50: 1.08±0.39, 15.57±0.48, 1.89±0.33 and 12.50±0.11 μg/mL values, respectively. Also, the anticholinesterase and anti-urease activities were tested against acetylcholinesterase (AChE), butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and urease enzymes, spectrophotometrically. The acetone extract (81.23±0.58 %) showed very close BChE inhibitory activity to galantamine. The hexane extract (96.97±0.36 %) of E. helioscopia showed higher anti-urease activity than thiourea (96.93±0.17 %) whereas the essential oil (91.37±0.26 %) indicated very close anti-urease activity to the standard.
Highlights
Euphorbiaceae family is distributed in all parts of the world except the Antarctic continent with over 5000 taxa
The chemical composition of the essential oil of E. helioscopia collected from Greece, was studied by Fokialakis et al [19] and phytol (21.2 %), β-caryophyllene (10.0 %) and docosanoic acid methyl ester (8.1 %) were found as major compounds
Antioxidant, anticholinesterase and anti-urease activities of the essential oil and various extracts of E. helioscopia were determined with the total phenolic and flavonoid contents
Summary
Euphorbiaceae family is distributed in all parts of the world except the Antarctic continent with over 5000 taxa. The most well-known of this family, is represented by approximately 2150 taxa in the world, while there are 109 taxa in our country. Euphorbia species are used in the treatment of various diseases such as a migraine, gonorrhea, skin diseases, intestinal parasites and warts cures [1]. Until this time, it is seen that secondary metabolites such as terpenes, flavonoids, tannins, steroids, alkaloids, and lipids are isolated from Euphorbia species [2,3,4,5].
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