The Effect of the Oil and Supercritical Fluid CO2 Extract of Juniperus rigida Sieb. on the Growth Performance of Rat Adrenal Nerve Cells

Abstract

It has been shown that the composition of the oils acquired by conventional steam distillation oil isolation (SDE) process was different from that obtained by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) process for many kinds of plants. However, it has not been well investigated that the correlation between the differences of oil compositions and their biological efficacy by simultaneously comparing these variables, even though the extract from SFE is used in many oil industries. The oils from the two extraction processes contain similar amounts of three major components such as α-pinene, myrcene and terpinolene; however, the oils by SFE had higher amounts of fatty acids and only citronellol. That may be one reason that the flavor from each process was very different. The extraction yield by SFE method was higher than by SDE, maintaining 0.054% (v/v) vs 0.032% (v/v), respectively. In general, the extracts from SFE process can produce better growth performance of nerve cells such as cell growth, initiation and elongation of the neurites, followed by that from SDE, compared to the results without supplementation (control). It was interesting that the oils could play an important role in enhancing the initiation of the neurites as well as improving the growth of the nerve cells. It was also found that the oils by SFE took only 20 min to react with the cells while the control took 160 min by kinetic analysis of the oils responding to the cells. The extracts by SFE process definitely delayed apoptotic death of nerve cells, which could result in maintaining better cell growth and higher elongation of the neurites of the cell.