A comparative study of the essential oil from flowers and fruits of lepisanthes rubiginosa (Roxb.) Leenh

Abstract

The essential oils extracted by hydrodistillation from the flowers and fruits of Lepisanthes rubiginosa (Roxb.) Leenh. were analyzed by capillary GC and GC-MS. The major components of the flower essential oil were nerolidol (34.8%), palmitic acid (13.2%) and farnesol (10.0%). For the fruit essential oil, palmitic acid (66.1%), myristic and (10.0%) and linoleic acid (5.5%) appeared to be the major constituents. Evaluation for in vitro anticancer activity of the essential oils was done against three human cancer cell lines (KB-Oral cavity cancer, MCF7 Breast cancer, NCI-H187 Small cell lung cancer). Only the flower essential oil exhibited anticancer activity against NCI-H187. Small cell lung cancer with the IC50of 43.90 μgmL-1. The flower essential oil also possessed antioxidant activity (ABTS method) with the % inhibition of 25.4%, whereas the fruit essential oil did not show anticancer activity and possessed low antioxidant activity with the % inhibition of 6.4%. The flower and fruit essential oils exhibited strong antimicrobial activity against Trichophyton mentagophyte and showed moderately activity against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans.