Saeed Ibtesam A, Ali Lizna, Jabeen Ayesha, Khasawneh Mohammad, Rizvi Tahir A, Ashraf S Salman
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science U.A.E. University, Al-Ain, P.O. Box: 17551, UAE.
J Chromatogr Sci. 2013 Jan;51(1):33-9. doi: 10.1093/chromsci/bms101. Epub 2012 Jun 14.
Traditional medicinal plants have long been recognized as remedies and important sources of treatment for developing countries. In the present study, we report on a detailed study to quantify the presence of five known phytoestrogens in 10 widely used herbs used in the Middle East. Surprisingly some of these plants were almost devoid of tested phytoestrogens, whereas others were very rich in known phytoestrogens. For example, Hibiscus sabdariffa was found to be the richest in quercetin and daidzein, whereas Cyperus conglomeratus had the highest concentrations of kaempferol and genistein. On the other hand, Salvadora persica was almost devoid of the screened phytoestrogens. Ethanolic extracts were further tested for their proliferative activities in cell-culture using estrogen-responsive breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7) and were found to fall into three distinct groups based on their estrogenic activities. The most potent herbal extract (O. vulgare) was further fractionated and the fractions were analyzed again for phytoestrogenic content (using high-performance liquid chromatography) and proliferative activity. Our results indicate that the proliferative activities of some of the extracts and fractions are not completely attributable to the phytoestrogens screened, thus it is likely that some of these plants may have other (perhaps yet unknown) phytoestrogens.
传统药用植物长期以来一直被视为发展中国家的治疗药物和重要治疗来源。在本研究中，我们报告了一项详细研究，以量化中东地区广泛使用的10种草药中5种已知植物雌激素的含量。令人惊讶的是，其中一些植物几乎不含所检测的植物雌激素，而其他植物则富含已知的植物雌激素。例如，发现玫瑰茄中槲皮素和大豆苷元含量最高，而聚集成莎草中山奈酚和染料木黄酮浓度最高。另一方面，没食子几乎不含所筛选的植物雌激素。使用雌激素反应性乳腺癌细胞系（MCF-7）对乙醇提取物在细胞培养中的增殖活性进行了进一步测试，发现根据其雌激素活性可分为三个不同的组。对最有效的草药提取物（牛至）进行了进一步分离，并再次对分离物的植物雌激素含量（使用高效液相色谱法）和增殖活性进行了分析。我们的结果表明，一些提取物和分离物的增殖活性并不完全归因于所筛选的植物雌激素，因此这些植物中的一些可能含有其他（也许尚未知晓的）植物雌激素。
