Lycium barbarum is the dried fruit of the Solanaceae plant Lycium barbarum L., which has a history of more than 2,000 years of edible and medicinal use. Wolfberry is rich in flavonoids, which may be the main reason for the high activity of wolfberry, but the research on the composition of flavonoids in wolfberry is still insufficient.
Flavonoids are a large group of polyhydric phenolic substances that are widely found in plant-derived foods such as vegetables, fruits and grains. These compounds have various biological activities, such as antioxidant, antiviral, antitumor, antibacterial and hypolipidemic activities. In recent years, the concept of promoting human health by intervening diet has attracted more and more attention of researchers. At the same time, natural products have become a research hotspot of human nutrition and health-related topics because of their advantages of small side effects, no drug resistance, and high safety index. However, flavonoids in plant-derived foods are difficult to isolate and identify, which hinders their further practical applications in functional foods.
The flavonoids (LBFs) in Lycium barbarum fruit have gradually become a research hotspot due to their outstanding antioxidant, hypolipidemic, hypoglycemic, antitumor and immunity-enhancing activities, as well as their preventive effects on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. At present, the research on LBFs mainly focuses on extraction, separation and purification, and few studies have identified and analyzed the specific components of LBFs. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the compound composition of LBFs and evaluate their biological activities.
In this study, flavonoids (LBFs) were extracted and preliminarily isolated from Lycium barbarum L., and 13 flavonoids were identified from Lycium barbarum fruit by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Among them, daphnetin, 6,7-dihydroxycoumarin, astragalin, taxifolin, eriodictyol, naringenin and chrysoeriol were identified from wolfberry fruit for the first time, which enriched the types of flavonoids in wolfberry fruit. The antioxidant activity of LBFs was studied by in vitro experiments, and the results showed that LBFs had similar antioxidant activity to VC. At the same time, the anti-inflammatory activity of LBFs was studied by using the inflammatory model of RAW264.7 macrophages induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). IL-1β and IL-6) production, and significantly inhibited the expression of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 at the mRNA level. The results are of great significance for enriching the types of flavonoids in Lycium barbarum fruit and the potential application of LBFs as functional food.
