Estudio fitoquímico de endemismos canarios. Valorización de compuestos naturales. Artemisia thuscula: estudio fitoquímico y actividad antibacteriana

Abstract

The utilization of herbs for medicinal purposes started in the early history of mankind several thousand years ago. In this study, an endemic plant of Canary’s islands such as Artemisia thuscula Cav. (Asteraceae) was screened for its phytochemical and antibacterial properties. For this purpose, this plant was extracted in different solvents i.e. acetone, dichloromethane, methanol/water, hexane and ethyl acetate and with different extraction methods such as maceration and sonication. The study involves the preliminary screening, quantitative determination and the qualitative thin layer chromatographic separation of secondary metabolites from the root, bark, leaf and flower. Furthermore, a comparation of the phytochemical profile between wild plants and the greenhouse ones took place. Phytochemical analysis unveiled the existence of different bioactive compounds in these extracts. Also, thin layer chromatography and NMR analysis of certain active extracts demonstrated the presence of common phytocompounds in the plant extracts. Antibacterial activity was determined against indicated bacterial strains (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Campylobacter jejuni) among all extracts, steam greenhouse ones had maximum inhibition against S.aureus. The following essays showed that the responsible of the antibacterial activity was one of the fractions that we separated in the chromatography column. Furthermore, some of roots, flower and leaf extracts showed several levels of antimicrobial activity against at least, one of the bacterial lines. In conclusion, in future studies the compounds with the biological activity could be identified, isolated and pharmacologically tested.