α-Glucosidase Inhibitory Activity of Selected Malaysian Plants.

Diabetes is a common metabolic disease indicated by unusually high plasma glucose level that can lead to major complications such as diabetic neuropathy, retinopathy, and cardiovascular diseases. One of the effective therapeutic managements of the disease is to reduce postprandial hyperglycemia through inhibition of α-glucosidase, a carbohydrate-hydrolyzing enzyme to retard overall glucose absorption. In recent years, a plenty of research works have been conducted looking for novel and effective α-glucosidase inhibitors (AGIs) from natural sources as alternatives for the synthetic AGI due to their unpleasant side effects. Plants and herbs are rich with secondary metabolites that have massive pharmaceutical potential. Besides, studies showed that phytochemicals such as flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, anthocyanins, glycosides, and phenolic compounds possess significant inhibitory activity against α-glucosidase enzyme. Malaysia is a tropical country that is rich with medicinal herbs. In this review, we focus on eight Malaysian plants with the potential as AGI to develop a potential functional food or lead compounds against diabetes.

Phytosterols and their extraction from various plant matrices using supercritical carbon dioxide: a review.

Phytosterols provide important health benefits: in particular, the lowering of cholesterol. From environmental and commercial points of view, the most appropriate technique has been searched for extracting phytosterols from plant matrices. As a green technology, supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using carbon dioxide (CO2) is widely used to extract bioactive compounds from different plant matrices. Several studies have been performed to extract phytosterols using supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) and this technology has clearly offered potential advantages over conventional extraction methods. However, the efficiency of SFE technology fully relies on the processing parameters, chemistry of interest compounds, nature of the plant matrices and expertise of handling. This review covers SFE technology with particular reference to phytosterol extraction using SC-CO2. Moreover, the chemistry of phytosterols, properties of supercritical fluids (SFs) and the applied experimental designs have been discussed for better understanding of phytosterol solubility in SC-CO2.