James LAXER et Robert LAXER, Le Canada des libéraux. Pierre-Elliott Trudeau et la survivance de la Confédération

The Amazon forest is rich in plant species diversity, among them,Piranhea trifoliata stands out, which is popularly known as piranheira, because their fruits are eaten by fish. Their barks are used as bath composition on uterus inflammation and as tea in malaria treatment. This study aimed to fractionate the dichloromethane and dichloromethane phase from methanolic extract of leaves of Piranhea trifoliata. The leaves were dried, grounded and extracted with dichloromethane, methanol and water. The methanol extract was partitioned with dichloromethane and ethyl acetate. The chromatographic fractionation yielded six pentacyclic triterpenoidsfriedelan-3-one, 28-hydroxy-friedelan-3-one, 30-hydroxy-friedelan-3-one, lupeol, α- and β-amyrin mixture, besides the mixture of the steroidsβ-sitosterol and stigmasterol. The substances structures were identified by 1H- and13C-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) analysis and literature data comparison. This is the first report describing the chemical study of P. trifoliata leaves.A floresta Amazônica é rica em diversas espécies vegetais, dentre elas, destaca-se Piranhea trifoliata, a qual é conhecida popularmente como piranheira, por seus frutos servirem de alimentos para peixes. Suas cascas são utilizadas como curativo para inflamação no útero em banhos de assento e para chás no tratamento de malária. O objetivo deste trabalho foi o fracionamento cromatográfico do extrato diclorometânico e da fase diclorometânica do extrato metanólico das folhas de Piranhea trifoliata. As folhas foram secas, moídas e extraídas com diclorometano, metanol e água. O extrato metanólico foi submetido à partição com diclorometano e acetato de etila. O fracionamento cromatográfico conduziu ao isolamento de seis triterpenoides pentacíclicos: friedelan-3-ona, 28-hidroxi-friedelan-3-ona, 30-hidroxi-friedelan-3-ona, lupeol, mistura de α- e β-amirina, além da mistura dos esteroides β-sitosterol e estigmasterol. As estruturas das substâncias foram identificadas pela análise dos espectros de Ressonância Magnética Nuclear (RMN) de 1H e de 13C e comparações com dados da literatura. Este é o primeiro relato descrevendo o estudo químico das folhas de P. trifoliata

Antibacterial activity of Minquartia guianensis extracts and phytochemical evaluation

The species Minquartia guianensis (Olacaceae) is found in the Amazon region and also in Nicarágua, Panamá and Costa Rica. Indigenous people from Ecuador use the bark infusion for intestinal infections treatment caused by parasites, against muscular pain and cutaneous irritations. For this reason, the aim of this work was to evaluate the antibacterial activity of M. guianensis extracts over Gram-negative (Shigella flexneri M90T, Salmonella choleraesuis 6958, Escherichia coli E2348/69) and Gram-positive bacteria (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus 33591, Methicillin-Sensible Staphylococcus aureus 25923, Bacillus cereus 9634, Bacillus liquefaciens clinical isolated). These bacteria are diarrhea related, which causes several child death in tropical regions. The active extract is under fractionation (leaf DCM) and until now, four triterpene were isolated lupeol, taraxerol, lupenona and squalene, but it was not possible yet to assay the substances, because of their small amount