Caracterização nutricional, atividade antioxidante e segurança de uso de frutos de OITI [Licania tomentosa (Benth.) Fritsch]

Abstract

Brazil has a great biological diversity to be explored for both nutritional and therapeutic purposes. The Brazilian native fruits are among the most tasty and nutritious in the world, however many of them are known only by the local population. Licania tomentosa, popularly known in Brazil as ‘oiti’ or ‘oitizeiro’, is native to the Atlantic Forest, a tree species, fruitful, perennial, little studied nutritionally. However, preliminary studies have indicated its antioxidant action. In addition, there are reports in the literature that species of the genus Licania have several medicinal uses, such as in the treatment of diabetes, malaria and against herpes virus. In order to add value to underexploited species in Brazil, the objective of this work was to perform the nutritional characterization of L. Tomentosa pulp (LTP1 and LTP2) and L. Tomentosa seeds (LTS1 and LTS2) collected in 2015 and 2016 as well as to identify the chemical compounds, to evaluate the antioxidant capacity and the safe use of the ethanolic extracts of the respective flours (EELTP1, EELTP2, EELTS1, EELTS2). Both pulps and seeds proved to be good sources of dietary fiber, have moderate mineral contents and lack of antinutritional factors. Eleven compounds were identified in EELTS1 and EELTS2 with predominance of flavonoids. EELTS1 and EELTS2 showed remarkable antioxidant activity in the DPPH assay (SC50 of 15.87 ± 0.88 and 10.30 ± 0.15 μg / mL, respectively), and were able to prevent lipid peroxidation (IC50 ~ 20 μg / mL) and to reduce iron (CR50 0.203 ± 0.00 and 0.309 ± 0.01 μg / mL, respectively). Regarding the safety of use, hemolysis was observed only in EELTS, at a concentration of 500 μg / mL in human blood (A, B, O) and at 2,000 μg / mL in rabbit blood, being less than 30% in the blood types tested. The results of the single dose acute oral toxicity test did not show any evidence of toxicity, whereas those of acute repeated doses (28 days) toxicity showed that only serum potassium levels (pulp 7.37 ± 0.07, 7.57 ± 0.39) in the male rats, and those of alkaline phosphatase (pulp 109.30 ± 4.84, seed 118.30 ± 3.84) in females had changes when compared to the control group. L. tomentosa showed promising, either from the nutritional point of view or as a source of bioactive molecules, besides being considered safe at the levels tested.