ABSTRACT
This study was aimed to compare the antioxidant activity of puerarin and 3 other flavonoid compounds, and to investigate their structure-activity relationship. The intragastric administration of 4 kinds of typical flavonoids compounds (soybean element, puerarin, quercetin and rutin) were given to mice, respectively. The model mice of acute hepatic injury were established with intraperitoneal injection of 0.1% carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) after 7 days. After 18 h fasting, liver tissues were removed. The histomorphology was observed after paraffin sectioning and hematoxylin-eosin staining. The activities of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in serum were detected with automatic biochemical analyzer. The content of malondialdehyde (MDA), the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in liver tissues were detected with homogenization. The pathological results of liver tissues showed that hepatic damages were decreased in all 4 medicine treatment groups compared with the model group, but there were no significant differences among these treatment groups. The results of blood serum bio-chemical analysis showed that compared with the model group, puerarin and quercetin could decrease the activities of ALT, AST and GGT in serum significantly (P < 0.05, orP < 0.01). There were no content changes of ALP. In the soybean element group, only the activities of ALT and AST decreased obviously (P < 0.05, orP < 0.01). There was no obvious change in the serum of mice in the rutin treatment group. The homogenate detection results of liver tissues showed that compared with the model group, quercetin and rutin significantly lowered MDA (P < 0.05), increased SOD and GSH-Px (P < 0.05, orP < 0.01); while soybean element and puerarin only improved GSH-Px levels (P < 0.05, orP < 0.01). It was concluded that the antioxidant capacity of quercetin was better than that of soybean element, puerarin and rutin, which may be related to its structure. Compared with 3 other chemical compounds, quercetin had more polyhydroxies and its polyhydroxies were not glycosylated, which suggested that the structure of quercetin may be closely related to its antioxidation activity.