Investigation of anti-protozoal activities and metabolite profiling of Helichrysum species based on traditional use

Tropical diseases such as leishmaniosis constitute a major health concern in developing countries. Helichrysum spp. mainly distributed in African countries have been used in traditional and folk medicine for the treatment of infectious diseases such as protozoal problems. We aimed to investigate and compare the anti-protozoal activities and bioactive phytochemical components of H. leucocephalum, H. oocephalum and H. oligocephalum. A sensitive method coupling high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with photodiode-array detector (PDA) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESIMS) was optimized for the separation and metabolite profiling. The LC-ESIMS metabolite profiles of the fractions from the plants were compared by applying two step workflow using an ACD/MS workbook suite add-in, and data clustering on an open-source web platform freeclust [1]. The metabolites can be categorized into two major types namely flavonoids and phenolic acids, and phloroglucinol and pyrone derivatives. This biological evaluation revealed potent activities for the obtained fractions particularly DCM extracts dominated with pyrone and phloroglucinol derivatives. DCM extract of H. oligocephalum showed to be the richest in pyrone and phloroglucinol derivatives with anti-protozoal activities. The data emphasizes on the potential of Helichrysum plants which are mostly distributed in South Africa for the treatment of infectious diseases dominated in developing countries particularly Africa itself.

• References

• 1 Božičević A, Dobrzyński M, De Bie H, Gafner F, Garo E, Hamburger M. Automated comparative metabolite profiling of large LC-ESIMS data sets in an ACD/MS workbook suite add-in, and data clustering on a new open-source web platform FreeClust. Anal Chem 2017; 89: 12682-12689