Cephaeline roots

The roots of Cephcelis Ipecacuanha (Brot) A. Rich constitute the Brazilian ipecacuanha of commerce and also that cultivated in the Federated Malay States, Bengal and Burma. Carthagena ipecacuanha is derived from Cephcelis acuminata Karsten collected in Colombia. Emetine, the principal alkaloid of this drug, was first obtained by Pelletier and Magendie in 1817, but was first prepared in a pure state by Paul and Cownley, who separated from commercial emetine the phenolic base, cephaeline, and later obtained a third alkaloid, psychotrine. To these Pyman added emetamine and 0-methylpsychotrine. 

Ipecac, the root of a Brazilian plant, contains several alkaloids of which two, emetine and cephaeline, produce local irritation and nausea and emesis, by central and local action, without danger of side effects. 

Ipecac is the root of Cephaetis ipecacuanha, or of C. acuminata, a perennial shrub growing in Brazil and other South American states (Figure 44.1). It contains three alkaloids — emetin, cephaelin, and psychotrin. The dose of the powdered drug as an expectorant is from 1/2 to 2 grain (0.03 to 0.13 g) as an emetic, 15 to 30 grain (1.0 to 2.0 g) (Table 44.1). 

The root of Cephaeiis ipecacuanha, also known as Psychotria ipecacuanha, is the source of ipecacuanha, which contains the emetic alkaloids emetine and cephaeline. Ipecacuanha is covered in a separate monograph. 

The root of the ipecac is commonly used as an expectorant in the treatment of bronchitis, croup, asthma amoebacide and whooping cough, as an emetic in cases of poisoning, and an amoebacide in amoebic dysentery. It has appeared in the Japanese Pharmacopoeia (2001) as ipecac, powdered ipecac and ipecac S)nxip [6]. The ipecac is rich in isoquinoline alkaloids such as emetine, cephaeline, psychotrine. 

In order to determine the rate of recovery, accurate amounts of emetine and cephaeline were added to the medium used for root culture where the adventitious roots of ipecac were cultured for 8 weeks and then extracted as follows twenty ml medium was mixed with 200 pi 10% ammonium hydroxide and 6 ml diethylether in a test tube for 5 min using vortex mixer. Four ml upper layer was accurately taken and concentrated under a stream of nitrogen gas. The extract was dissolved in an appropriate volume of methanol and quantitatively analyzed by HPLC. The HPLC system gave good recovery 104.4% for emetine and 104.8% for cephaeline (Table 6). 

Table 6. Recovery of emetine and cephaeline from the medium used for root culture of C. ipecacuanha...

The alkaloid contents of the lY-plants are shown in Fig. (16). The leaves contained lower amount of alkaloids than roots and rootlets. The alkaloid contents in the roots of 1 Y-plants increased from June to December in Tanegashima, while they decreased in September and October in Tsukuba. The roots of 1 Y-plants in a greenhouse demonstrated relatively stable alkaloid contents. The maximum alkaloid contents in the roots were obtained in December both in Tsukuba (2.4% dry weight cephaeline, 1.0% dry weight emetine) and Tanegashima (3.2% dry weight cephaeline, 1.8% dry weight emetine). 

Although the emetine and the cephaeline could be detected in the first passage calli, they were undetectable by the third passage (section 2.1). However, root culture, especially root culture in liquid medium, showed consistent levels of alkaloids even after the third culture passage. In order to increase the yield of the alkaloids in root culture, culture conditions, such as various ph5dohormones and basal media were investigated [15, 54]. 

The effects of lAA, NAA and 2,4-D on the growth and alkaloid yields of root cultures in MS liquid medium are shown in Fig. (31). The cultured roots produced much more cephaeline than emetine, although the rootlets of the parental plant cultivated in a greenhouse contained almost the same amounts of emetine and cephaeline, i.e. 1.6% and 1.9% dry weight, respectively (Table 4). The roots grew well in a liquid medium in the presence of 5 mg/1 NAA, while the roots formed calli and swelled in the presence of 10 mg/1 lAA, and NAA and 0.5 mg/1 2,4-D and were not suitable for the alkaloid formation. Therefore, organized structures such as roots may be important for the biosynthesis of emetine and cephaeline. 

A one-year-old Cephaelis ipecacuanha plant propagated through shoot-tip culture (section 1.1) in a greenhouse accumulated ca. 2 mg emetine and ca. 2 mg cephaeline, respectively, in its roots ca. 0.2 g total dry weight). On the other hand, the root culture of ipecac cultured for 7 weeks in 50 ml MS medium containing 0.01 mg/1 5,6-Cl2-IAA yielded almost the same amounts of alkaloids, 0.6 mg emetine and 2.4 mg cephaeline. Thus the root culture of ipecac is a realistic economic source of the isoquinoline alkaloids. 

Ipecac alkaloids were extracted and analyzed by HPLC as previously reported [section 1.2]. Two flasks were used for each culture condition. The contents of isoquinoline alkaloids, protoemetine, cephaeline and emetine in the transformed roots, are shown in Fig. (54). 

Cultural conditions are the same as Fig. (54). Bars represent standard deviations of the mean. Left column protoemetine, center column cephaeline, right column emetine. Upper column alkaloid in roots, lower column alkaloid in medium. 

The isoquinoline alkaloid contents in the transformed and non-transformed plants are indicated in Table 16. Alkaloid contents in the leaves were higher than those in the roots despite transformation. Cephaeline was the major alkaloid in all parts of in vitro plants as well as the root cultures. Alkaloid contents in the transformed plants, both in the leaves and roots, were lower than those of non-transformed plants except emetine in the roots. Any advantageous effects of T-DNA integration into ipecac on the alkaloid accumulation in the regenerated plants were not observed as previously reported for Duboisia hybrid [79] and Hyoscyamus muticus [103]. 

Syrup of ipecac is available as a nonprescription product in many countries. It is derived from the dried rhizome and roots of the Cephaelis ipecacuanha or Cephaelis acuminata plant. These plants contain the potent emetic alkaloids emetine and cephaeline, which induce vomiting by both direct local gastrointestinal effects and central nervous system actions. Emesis following syrup of ipecac ingestion typically occurs within 20 min of ingestion and persists for 30-120 min. 

The ipecacuanha root has three actions expectorant, emetic and amoebicidal. The expectorant action is due to the irritant effect of emetine and cephaeline on the gastrointestinal tract, which causes a reflex increase in the secretion of respiratory tract fluid. The dose is... 

In the meantime, the formation of the main alkaloids in C. ipecacuanha under a variety of conditions has been extensively investigated emetine (1) in callus cultures (49) and under the effects of L-tyrosine supplementation (5t)) emetine (1) and cephaeline (2) in Panamanian ipecac (57), in Nicaraguan ipecac (52), in regenerates obtained by clonal propagation (53,54), in tissue cultures (55) and under the effects of exogenous feeding of shikimic acid and L-phenylalanine (55), in cell suspension and excised root cultures (57), in adventitious root cultures (58), and in callus cultures (56,59) and the effects of age and electrokinetic potential (60) ipecoside (7) in the roots (61) and the effect oi Azotobacter, leaf mold, and farmyard manure on alkaloid content (62). In addition, micropropagation systems for C. ipecacuanha have been developed (63-65). 

Dried roots contain from 2 to 3% alkaloids, of which emetine (60 to 75%) is the most effective. Cephaeline (methyl emetine) is next in abundance, but is not as effective as emetine. Other components are emetamine, psycotrine and methyl psycotrine. The structures of these are shown below. 

The roots of this plant were shown to contain emetine but cephaeline... 

Cephaeline occurs in the ground roots of ipecac along with emetine. The Brazilian variety usually contains about 0.5%... 

The roots of Rio Ipecac always contain more than 2% of total alkaloids. Carr and Pyman (13) reported 2.7% total alkaloids from which they obtained 1.35% pure emetine and 0.25% cephaeline. The following table is borrowed from Hesse (14). 

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