Astragalus biological activity

Secondary metabolites of Genus Astragalus structure and biological activity L. PISTELLI... 

Advances in research are performed on the genus Astragalus and about 100 different species have been chemically studied imtill now [249]. The genus appears highly uniform from a chemical point of view, with three kinds of biologically active principles and three diffent groups of toxic compounds. The active constituents are saponins, flavonoids, and polysaccharides, while nitro-compoimds, indolizidine alkaloids and the seleniferous derivatives are included in the poisonous groups. 

The purpose of this review is to present an overview of these secondary metabolites extracted from Astragalus spp., the newer methodology used for their isolation and structure elucidation and the biological activities of these compounds reported up to the beginning of 2000. 

During the almost 20-years of research on Astragalus sapogenins and saponins, more than 40 species firom this genus have been studied and above 40 triterpenoid sapogenins and up to 130 saponins have been isolated and identified until now, and for some of them the biological activity has also been studied. 

The Astragalus root and its polysaccharide (APS) have a lot of biological activity such as antineoplasm, antihepatitis and antisenility [314]. In this article are reported the therapeutic effect on epatitis of Astragalus polysaccharide the experiments in vivo showes that the interferon induced in the plasma of patients with hepatitis increased 3 titres after the treatment by oral administration of APS, identical with the reported documents in vitro. 

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