Fraccionamiento de Desmodium molliculum (hierba del infante) para la determinación de la actividad antioxidante en extractos enriquecidos

Abstract

Desmodium spp. has stood out from other genera of the Fabaceae family for its variety of uses in traditional medicine that derive from the secondary metabolites responsible for pharmacological activity. Despite the species Desmodium molliculum, known as Hierba del Infante, is part of the native flora of Latin America and other continents, its available information is limited. The focus of the study is directed to the use of the liquid-liquid fractionation technique as a tool for obtaining enriched extracts, using solvents with high extractive power of phenolic compounds, mainly flavonoids. The extracts were analyzed by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and it was possible to demonstrate the content of metabolites of a flavonoid nature. The phenolic content was evaluated using the Folin-Ciocalteu test, and the antioxidant activity using the tests of; antioxidant/iron reducing power (FRAP), 2,2'-azino- bis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid reaction (ABTS) and free radical scavenging (DPPH). This is an analytical cross-sectional study, in which descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey's test were applied for the analysis of the variables, obtaining a significance level of P<0.05. The results show the efficiency of the liquid-liquid fractionation in obtaining enriched extracts, especially in the methanolic (F2) and aqueous (F4) fraction, which reflected the highest phenolic contents and the highest antioxidant capacity.