European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Anchusa italica Retz. is naturally grown in Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and it belongs to the Boraginaceae family. From a phytochemical point of view, the species A. italica has been almost neglected so far and it was thus considered worthy of study. In this study, the flavonoids were extracted from aerial parts of the plant using ethyl acetate, amyl alcohol, and n-butanol after defatting the plant by n-hexane and removing the pigments by chloroform. The residue obtained from evaporation of ethyl acetate extract was separated by reversed phase Medium Performance Liquid Chromatography (MPLC) to give a polar flavonoid. Standard UV experiments allowed for the identification of the aglycone moiety substituted pattern, while the sugar components and the interglycoside linkage was identified by different NMR spectra. The compound was eventually identified as kaempferol 3-O-rutinoside. The other aim of this investigation is to study the antimicrobial activity for some extracts of the plant. It consists of two parts; the first part was antibacterial activity using four different bacteria (E. coli, Staph. aureus, Bacillus sp. and Pseudo. aeruginosa) via agar diffusion disc method, while the second part includes antifungal activity using two different fungi (Pencillium puberulum and Aspergillus flavus). This study showed that Anchusa italica is a good antibacterial plant especially aqueous and ethanolic extracts, at which the inhibition zone reaches (13 mm), while the aqueous extract was more effective compared with the ethanol extract for antifungal.