Chemical Constituents of Functional Food Amomum villosum to Combat Human Diseases

Abstract

Amomum villosum is an important medicinal and edible plant owing to its valuable compositions of volatile and non-volatile compounds. In order to reveal the chemical constituents and medicinal values of A. villosum against various diseases. A critical and comprehensive data mining from 2004 to 2021 was performed based on CNKI, PubMed, and google. 120 Compounds have been reported collectively in seeds, peels, and rhizomes of A. villosum, 10 compounds were common however the content of bornyl acetate was maximum in seeds and peels. Similarly, Amomi fructus of China and Vietnam showed 59 different types of volatile compounds while 13 were common, the round large black fruits (1.56% bornyl acetate and 4.05% volatile oil) and long small red fruits type (1.64% bornyl acetate and 3.04% volatile oil) from China showed good quality and high medicinal values. In addition, Amomi fructus manifested 30~40 kinds of nonvolatile compounds, i.e., phenolic, polysaccharides, saponins, flavonoid, vanillic acid, catechin, epicatechin, polydatin, isoquercitrin, quercitrin, glycosides, inorganic and organic acids. A. villosum is widely used as anti-inflammatory, gastrointestinal protection, anti-obesity, anticancer, antioxidant, analgesic, bacteriostasis, antidiabetic and anti-COVID-19 etc. So, it is manifested that the fruit, flowers, roots, stems, and leaves of A. villosum can be used as a medicine, especially fruit (Amomi fructus=Sharen) as the best functional food for the COVID-19 treatment and gastrointestinal protection as well as prevention of other diseases.