Screening and Characterization of Vitexin from Vitex negundo by LCMS, pHPLC and 13CNMR Analysis

Abstract

Complementary herbal medicines are currently required to overcome the drastic side effects of chemical based Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDS) and Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS). Herbal based drugs may include herbal preparations, purified compounds, vitamins and their products. Vitex negundo commonly called ‘Nochi’ in Tamil is an annual edible medicinal plant predominantly used as mosquito repellent. Traditionally leaves and root of V. negundo are used to treat cough, asthma, colitis, dysentery, diarrhoea, flatulence, fever, vomiting, and rheumatism. V. negundo is also found to possess analgesic, anti-oxidant, antiinflammatory, anti-arthritic, anti-hyper pigmentation, immuno-stimulant, hepato-protective, anti-androgenic, pesticidal, anti-cancerous and anti-metastatic activity. V. negundo contains ample bioactive leads that might be pharmacologically beneficial. Therefore, the scientific validation of this folkloric herbal practice is needed. The present study aimed to assess the free radical scavenging role of methanolic extract of leaf and root of Vitex negundo. The study also focused on screening, isolation and characterization of bioactive compound Vitexin. Vitexin is a pharmacologically beneficial flavonoid found to be in the root extract of V. negundo. The roots of V. negundo were subjected to in vitro qualitative and quantitative phytochemical screening and the results showed that both the leaf and root extract may possess effective free radical scavenging role. Studies on root extract revealed the presence of abundant flavonoids in comparison with leaf extract of V. negundo. The root extract was further subjected to preparative Thin Layer Chromatography (pTLC), Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrophotometry (LCMS), and preparative High performance Liquid Chromatography (pHPLC) for the screening and isolation of flavonoids. The structure of Vitexin was confirmed by 13C NMR characterization analysis on comparison with the literaure. The present work may develop simple and reliable method for the purification of bioactive flavonoids from the methanolic root extract of the medicinal plant V. negundo which may possesses abundant biomedical importance against inflammatory diseases.