Tannins and Related Compounds Isolated from Terminalia bellerica

Terminalia bellerica, an ingredient of Indian Ayurvedic herbal formulation „triphala“, is used to treat digestion and liver disorders. A significant number of triterpenoids have been isolated from the stem bark of this plant [1–2]. Although the fruit of this plant is used as the major medicinal part and tannins could potentially be important active constituents, to date no study on tannins have been reported from the fruit of the titled plant except for simple phenol, gallic acid [3]. Herein, we reported 8 major tannins and related compounds from the methanol extract of the fruit of T. bellerica. The structures of these compounds were established as gallic acid (1), methyl gallate (2), 1, 2, 3, 6-tetra-O-galloyl-b-D-glucose, (3) [4], 2, 3, 6-tri-O-galloyl-b-D-glucose (4) [4], chebulagic acid (5) [5], 1, 2, 3, 4, 6-pentagalloyl-b-D-glucose (6) [4], corilagin (7) [6], chebulinic acid (8) [5], by spectroscopic methods and comparison of NMR data with that of reported literature data.

Acknowledgements: This research is supported in part by „Science Based Authentication of Dietary Supplements“ and „Botanical Dietary Supplement Research“ funded by the Food and Drug Administration grant numbers 5U01FD002071–09 and 1U01FD003871–01, and the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Specific Cooperative Agreement No. 58–6408–2-0009. References: [1] Ashoke K, et al. (1989) Phytochemistry 28: 2769–2772. [2] Shashi B, et al. (1992) Tetrahedron 48: 2483–2494. [3] Jadon A, et al. (2007)J Ethnopharm 109: 214–218. [4] Lee SH, et al. (1990) Phytochemistry 29: 3621–3625. [5] Yoshida T, et al. (1980) Chem Pharm Bull 28: 3713–3715. [6] Liu YZ, et al. (1998) Chin Chem Letters 9: 827–828.

P56, Fig.1