Antioxidant Ability and Mechanism of Rhizoma Atractylodes macrocephala.docVIP

Molecules 2012, 17, 13457-13472; doi:10.3390/molecules171113457 OPEN ACCESS molecules ISSN 1420-3049 /journal/molecules Article Antioxidant Ability and Mechanism of Rhizoma Atractylodes macrocephala Xican Li 1,?,*, Jian Lin 1,?, Weijuan Han 1, Wenqiong Mai 1, Li Wang 1, Qiang Li 1, Miaofang Lin 1, Mingsong Bai 1, Lishan Zhang 1 and Dongfeng Chen 2,* 1 School of Chinese Herbal Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510006, China 2 School of Basic Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou 510006, China ? These authors contributed equally to this work. * Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mails: lixican@126.com (X.L.); cdf27212@21 (D.C.); Tel.: +86-20-3935-8076 (X.L.); Fax: +86-20-3889-2690 (X.L.). Received: 18 October 2012; in revised form: 7 November 2012 / Accepted: 8 November 2012 / Published: 13 November 2012 Abstract: Rhizoma Atractylodes macrocephala (AM) has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for about 2,000 years. In the study, we firstly determined the antioxidant levels of five AM extracts by ?OH-scavenging, ?O2?-scavenging, Fe2+-chelating, Cu2+-chelating, DPPH·-scavenging, and ABTS+·-scavenging assays. After measurement of the chemical contents in five AM extracts, we quantitatively analyzed the correlations between antioxidant levels and chemical contents. It was observed that total phenolics and total flavonoids had significant positive correlations with antioxidant levels (R = 0.685 and 0.479, respectively). In contrast, total sugars and total saponins presented lower correlations with antioxidant levels (R = ?0.272 and 0.244, respectively). It means that antioxidant activity of AM should be attributed to total phenolics (including phenolic acids and flavonoids), and not total sugars and total saponins. Further analysis indicated that phenolic acids exhibited higher R values with radical-scavenging