Ethnopharmacological communicationAnti-allergic activity of compounds from Kaempferia parviflora
Introduction
Kaempferia parviflora is one of the plants in the Zingiberaceae family, locally known in Thai as kra-chai-dam. The rhizome of this plant has been used for treatment of allergy, gastrointestinal disorders, fungal infection and impotence (Pengcharoen, 2002). This plant has been known as Thai ginseng. Kaempferia parviflora has recently been reported to possess antimycobacterial, antiplasmodial (Yenjai et al., 2004), anti-peptic ulcer (Rujjanawate et al., 2005) and anti-viral protease effects (Sookkongwaree et al., 2006) as well as modulators of multidrug resistance in cancer cells (Patanasethanont et al., 2007). The wine preparation of this plant is increasingly used in Thailand as a tonic and as an aphrodisiac. In Thai traditional medicine, the decoction of Kaempferia parviflora powder with alcohol has been reported to cure allergy, asthma, impotence, gout, diarrhea, dysentery, peptic ulcer and diabetes. Previously, we reported anti-allergic effects of the selected Zingiberaceous plants using RBL-2H3 cell line model (Tewtrakul and Subhadhirasakul, 2007). It was found that the rhizome of Kaempferia parviflora exhibited the most potent activity (IC50 = 10.9 μg/ml). The present study therefore aimed to investigate the active principles of this plant, which are responsible for anti-allergic effect.
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Reagents
Minimum Essential Medium Eagle (MEM) and anti-DNP-IgE (Monoclonal anti-DNP) were purchased from Sigma; fetal calf serum (FCS) was purchased from Gibco; dinitrophenylated bovine serum albumin was prepared as described previously (Tada and Okumura, 1971). Other chemicals were obtained from Sigma. 24-well and 96-well plates were purchased from Nunc.
Plant materials
Kaempferia parviflora rhizomes, locally grown in Loei province, were bought from a Thai traditional drug store in Songkhla province, Thailand in the
Results and discussion
Bioassay-guided fractionation led to the isolation of seven methoxyflavone derivatives, the structures of these compounds are shown in Fig. 1. The effect of these compounds on anti-allergic activity indicated that 5-hydroxy-3,7,3′,4′-tetramethoxyflavone (5) possessed the highest anti-allergic activity with an IC50 value of 8.0 μM, followed by 5-hydroxy-7-methoxyflavone (2, IC50 = 20.6 μM) and 5-hydroxy-7,4′-dimethoxyflavone (4, IC50 = 26.0 μM), whereas others showed moderate activities (IC50 = 37.5–66.5
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) and the Commission on Higher Education for financial support. We also thank the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences for providing laboratory facilities.
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