Activity of sap from Croton lechleri on rat vascular and gastric smooth muscles
Introduction
Croton lechleri L. (Euphorbiaceae) known as Sangre de Drago (SdD) or dragon's blood is one of the most widely used medicinal plants of the South American tropics. The blood-red tree sap is traditionally used to treat many illnesses (Jones 2003) and recently, this sap has become available in many countries as a dietary supplement. SdD is a crude drug which is used topically in the treatment of wound healing and orally, in a dilute form, mainly for stomach ulcers, ulcerative colitis, dysentery and diarrhoea (Miller et al. 2000). The combination of antimicrobial, antioxidant, antiviral and cicatrizing properties makes this red sap a complex herbal remedy of pharmacological interest (Williams 2001; Risco et al. 2003). The chemical constituents of the sap from C. lechleri have already been thoroughly investigated, for which reason we did not look further into this matter. Authors have shown that more than 90% dry weight of the sap consists of mixtures of proanthocyanidins such as catechin, epicatechin, gallocatechin, epigallocatechin and dimeric procyanidins (Cai et al. 1991; Phillipson 1995). Other minor components are clerodane diterpenoids korberin A and B (Cai et al., 1993a, Cai et al., 1993b), 1,3,5-trimethoxybenzene and 2,4,6-trimethoxyphenol, lignan 3′, 4-O-dimethylcedrusin, and alkaloid taspine (Phillipson 1995; Vaisberg et al. 1989; Pieters et al. 1993). Recently, authors have identified other minor components such as blumenols B and C, 4,5-dihydroblumenol A and floribundic acid glucoside (De Marino et al. 2008). In order to have the best definition of the tested product, prior to the activity testing, SdD samples were characterised using different chromatographic and spectroscopic methods.
During the research, we examined the activity of the dried red sap from C. lechleri (SdD) on both rat caudal artery and gastric fundus, two experimental models of smooth muscles, to focus on the vascular and gastric effects of this traditional remedy as no data is available on this matter in scientific literature.
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Plant material, chemicals and instrumentation
The red sap was obtained in the traditional way, carving the bark of trees growing in the province of Napo, Ecuador. The voucher code No: SdD 005 for the crude drug was deposited in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Padua University.
The sap was freeze-dried in a lyophilizer and stored in the dark at −20 °C.
Chemicals, reagents and solvents, were purchased from Aldrich or Fluka and used without further purification. When necessary the solvents where HPLC grade. 1H and 13C NMR spectra
Results
The pH of fresh red sap of C. lechleri (SdD) was 3.9 and the density was 1.09 g/ml according to literature data (Risco et al. 2003). SdD (10 μl/ml) per se slightly changed basal contractile tension in caudal arteries (Fig. 2), but not in gastric fundus strips (data not shown).
To permit the conservation of the sap and to standardize experiments, we freeze-dried the fresh sap obtaining a crystal brown powder with a dry residue of 24%. The dried sap, tested from 10 to 1000 μg/ml, per se increased
Discussion
The main finding from this study is that the sap of C. lechleri increased contractile tension in a concentration-dependent way, both on vascular and gastric smooth muscles, indicating the presence of active compound(s) in the sap.
How does the sap increase the contractile tension? We studied vasoconstriction by SdD using various types of pharmacological tools acting at receptor subtypes or ionic channels regulating vascular tension. Atropine, a well known competitive muscarinic antagonist, did
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank “Il Crisolito”s.r.l. (Spresiano, Treviso Italy) and Padri Giuseppini for providing the plant materials. The authors are grateful to Elena Baldon for performing some experiments while preparing her degree thesis. We are also grateful to Dr. L. Soldà and Mr. E. Secchi for technical and Mr. S. Lovison for software assistance, Dr. R. Sato and Mrs. F. Chinaglia for reference assistance and Sara Eames for the English text revision.
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