Measurement of sesamin and asarinin in the roots, flowers, leaves and stems of Anemopsis californica by high-performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

Anemopsis californica is a medicinal plant used by indigenous ethnic groups in northwest Mexico and the southwestern United States. Among its chemical components are the lignans sesamin and asarinin, which have important biological functions. This study describes a liquid chromatography method for the simultaneous quantification of sesamin and asarinin in the roots, flowers, leaves and stems of this plant.

In the present work, the method intra- and inter-day precision (reported as RSD %; n = 8 for intra-day and n = 3 for inter-day, corresponding to three consecutive weeks, with four replicate measurements per week) for sesamin were between 2.37 and 4.57 %, and those for asarinin were between 2.53 and 5.37 %, respectively. The recovery of sesamin and asarinin in roots, flowers, leaves, and stems ranged from 92.40 to 98.80 % and from 91.20 to 99.87 %, respectively. When comparing the contents of these compounds during different flowering times, it was found that the contents of both lignans were greater (almost double) when the plant was harvested in summer than when the plant was harvested in spring. The roots were the main sources of sesamin and asarinin; the average dry sample content of sesamin in the summer roots was 845.55 µg/g dry sample, and that of asarinin was 1701.51 µg/g dry sample. This study proposes a reliable HPLC method for the quantitative determination of both lignans in all parts of Anemopsis californica, highlighting its potential medicinal relevance and supporting future research on this species.