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Submitted July 2018; accepted November 2018
Elateriospermum tapos contains high unsaturated fat and phytochemicals with many health benefits. This paper focuses on activities and inhibitory effects of E. tapos on digestive enzymes. Cold water, hot water and 70% ethanol extracts of the seed and shell of the fruit of E. tapos were used in this study. The extracts were screened for antioxidant activity, total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, and inhibitory effects on a-amylase, a-glucosidase and pancreatic lipase. Hot water extraction of shell of the E. tapos fruit had the highest total phenolic content (1298.60 ± 4. 24 μg GAE 100 g-1), total flavonoid content (16685.58 ± 487.77 μg CE 100 g-1) and antioxidant activity by 2, 2-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl and β-carotene methods (84.16 and 122.17% respectively). The seed cold extract showed maximum α-amylase inhibition with IC50 (half maximal inhibitory concentration) of 0.03 mg mL-1. The lowest IC50 (0.02 mg mL-1) for α-glucosidase inhibition was from seed ethanol extracts while shell cold extract had the lowest IC50 for pancreatic lipase inhibition (37.80 mg mL-1). Results confirmed E. tapos as potential antioxidant and inhibitor of digestive enzymes for lipid (pancreatic lipase) and carbohydrate (α-amylase and α-glucosidase) which are beneficial to combat obesity and diabetes.
Keywords: Antioxidant, total phenolic content, flavonoid, digestive enzymes, obesity, diabetes
INTRODUCTION
The digestion of carbohydrates is primarily carried out by digestive enzymes including amylase and glucosidase (Rossi et al. 2006) while pancreatic lipase is responsible for fat hydrolysis (Zhang et al. 2015). Orlistat, the drug treatment for obesity has been reported to be a potent inhibitor of carboxylester lipase, gastric lipase and pancreatic lipase (Sahib et al. 2012). However, this drug poses undesirable side effects such as gastrointestinal disorders (bloating, flatulence and diarrhoea) (Johansson et al. 2009, Florez et al. 2010). Since dietary triglyceride and carbohydrate are the main sources of ingested lipid and glucose respectively, controlling the absorption of these nutrients is the most effective approach to prevent excess calorie and sugar intake.
Phenolic compounds possess a broad array of biochemical agents including antioxidant, anti-mutagenic, anti-cancer agents (Nakamura et al. 2003) and show valuable therapeutic potential for diabetes and other obesity-related complications such as hyperlipidemia (Alam et al. 2016)....