Investigation of Chemical Composition, Antioxidant, Anticholinesterase and Anti-urease activities of Euphorbia helioscopia

Abstract

In this study, chemical composition, antioxidant, anticholinesterase and anti-urease activities of the essential oil, hexane, acetone, methanol and water extracts of Euphorbia helioscopia were investigated. The chemical composition of the essential oil was analyzed by GC and GC/MS and β-cubebene (19.3 %), palmitic acid (12.2 %) and caryophyllene oxide (11.7 %) were identified as major compounds. The antioxidant activity of essential oil and extracts was performed by several methods such as β-carotene-linoleic acid, DPPH•, ABTS•+ radical scavenging, CUPRAC and metal chelating assays. The water extract showed higher antioxidant activity than BHA and α-tocopherol in β-carotene-linoleic acid, DPPH•, ABTS•+ and CUPRAC assays with IC50: 1.08±0.39, 15.57±0.48, 1.89±0.33 and 12.50±0.11 μg/mL values, respectively. Also, the anticholinesterase and anti-urease activities were tested against acetylcholinesterase (AChE), butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) and urease enzymes, spectrophotometrically. The acetone extract (81.23±0.58 %) showed very close BChE inhibitory activity to galantamine. The hexane extract (96.97±0.36 %) of E. helioscopia showed higher anti-urease activity than thiourea (96.93±0.17 %) whereas the essential oil (91.37±0.26 %) indicated very close anti-urease activity to the standard