Abstract
Preparations from the dried tubers of Harpagophytum procumbens (Burch.) DC ex Meisn, commonly known as devil’s claw, are mainly used in modern medicine to relieve joint pain and inflammation in patients suffering from rheumatic and arthritic disorders. This paper describes for the first time the chemical profile of a commercial spagyric tincture (named 019) prepared from the roots of the plant. For comparison purposes, a commercial not-spagyric devil’s claw tincture (NST) was also analyzed. Chemical investigation of the content of specialized metabolites in the three samples indicated that harpagoside was the main compound, followed by the two isomers acteoside and isoacteoside. Compositional consistence over time was obtained by the chemical fingerprinting of another spagyric tincture (named 014) from the same producer that was already expired according to the recommendation on the label of the product. The two spagyric preparations did not show significant compositional differences as revealed by HPLC and MS analyses, except for a decrease in harpagide content in the expired 014 tincture. Moreover, their antioxidant capacities as assessed by 2,2’-di-phenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2.2’-azin-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) methods resulted in very similar IC50 values. The expired 014 tincture showed instead a lower IC50 value compared to the 019 and NST tinctures with the ferric reducing antioxidant potential (FRAP) assay, indicating a higher ferric-reducing antioxidant ability. Overall, these results indicated that the two preparations could generally maintain good stability and biological activity at least for the four years from the production to the expiration date.
Highlights
Harpagophytum procumbens (Burch.) DC ex Meisn, commonly known as devil’s claw, is a plant native to southern Africa, where it is traditionally used as a bitter tonic and a stomachic and for the treatment of fever, gout, myalgia, and arthritis [1,2]
With regard to the not-spagyric devil’s claw tincture (NST) sample, its free radical scavenging activity and its ferric-reducing activity gave results almost superimposable on those obtained for the two spagyric tinctures, with a good dose versus % inhibition correlation
We compared the compositional profile of two commercial food supplements (declared to be spagyric tinctures (019 and 014) and provided by the same producer company) with the aim of assessing the quality of the preparations in terms of chemical fingerprinting and biological activity
Summary
Harpagophytum procumbens (Burch.) DC ex Meisn, commonly known as devil’s claw, is a plant native to southern Africa, where it is traditionally used as a bitter tonic and a stomachic and for the treatment of fever, gout, myalgia, and arthritis [1,2]. The overall quality of botanicals depends on several factors, including the selection of raw plant materials, harvest time, seasonal changes, and post-harvest processing, and it relies on extraction procedures and product preparations All of these factors can primarily affect the plant/drug content of bioactive constituents and impair the efficacy of the final formulation. The use of fingerprinting in the analytical control of herbal preparation is a widely accepted official method [7,8,9,10] to assess quality and stability over time and eventually disclose some variation in the chemical content that could reflect a decline in biological activity Bitter iridoid glucosides such as harpagoside and harpagide are widely regarded as the active constituents responsible for the pharmacological anti-inflammatory properties of H. procumbens [13,14,15,16]. Typical UV absorptions (Table 1) detecting around 217, 246–248, 290, and
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