Determinação das atividades antioxidante e ansiolítica de extratos das raízes de Capraria biflora

Abstract

From the beginning, human beings depended on nature for their survival, relying mainly on plants, which they considered medicinal, for their healing. Over the course of evolution, new forms of therapy and new sources of organic matter were discovered in addition to plant, mineral or animal matter. This implies that most of the history of healing in humanity is linked to the use of medicinal plants. The species Capraria biflora, commonly known as river tea and belonging to the Scrophulariaceae family, is an herb widely used in folk medicine for its anti-inflammatory, diuretic and analgesic potential, for example. In addition, there are reports in the literature of the presence of a quinone called biflorin, with various proven biological activities such as antitumor, antimutagenic and antimicrobial effects. In this work, the biotechnological potential of the selected species was studied using hexanic and ethanolic extracts obtained from the roots of the plant, determining the antioxidant activity using the DPPHo free radical scavenging method and the anxiolytic activity using zebra fish as model animals. The antioxidant activity of the hexanolic extract resulted in an IC50 of 0.1091 mg/mL, while the IC50 of the ethanolic extract was 0.1965 mg/mL, which are considered moderate results. Three fractions were obtained from the hexanic extract (F1, F2 and F3), which were only tested for antioxidant activity, where F1 did not show a positive result. The anxiolytic activity of the hexenic extract showed promising results, close to the effect of Diazepam used as a control, and the sample was considered safe against zebra fish. A solid isolated from the ethanolic extract was characterized by infrared (IR) and 1H and 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopic methods, and could be identified as Mannitol, a simple, open-chain carbohydrate.