Cycas rumphii

Incorporating the Kirtas system with the International Plant Names Index and SNOW-MED allows movement of the historic text into an electronic format, identihcation of current plant names, and identihcation of the symptoms treated with the plants. To complete the mining of historic herbal texts for novel drug leads we use the Natural Products Alert (NAPRALERT ) database to compare the information extracted from the historic herbal text to the reports of plant use in the current literature. The NAPRALERT database provides a summary of plants ethnopharmacological use, biochemical activities, and isolated compounds [27]. By querying each plant (with the current plant name) it is possible to identify any reports in the current literature regarding the plant. As an example, Table 4.1 shows the NAPRALERT output for Cycas rumphii. 

TABLE 4.1 Biological Activities for Compounds of Cycas rumphii... 

To generate this table NAPRALERT was queried for all biological activities of Cycas rumphii. The results of the Reference section correspond to the NAPRALERT M-coded references. 

Some plants regularly eaten by humans contain neurotoxins that pose serious health problems. On Guam, for example, the seeds of Cycas circinalis used to be an important source of carbohydrates. Seeds of Cycas rumphii were ground into flour for tortillas. However, the seeds contain jS-N-methylamino-i-alanine, a suspected excitotoxin that overstimulates and destroys nerve cells. This compound causes a parkinsonism-like disease in macaques (Spencer et al, 1987). Other toxins have been proposed to be responsible for the disease, among them cycasin, another cycad toxin (Stone, 1993). 

Cycas rumphii Miq. (leaves) Amentoflavone (1). Amentoflavone is an inhibitor of phospholipase C yl, an irreversible inhibitor of lymphocjde proliferation, and an inhibitor of cjdosolic phospholipase A2 (CPLA2) activity in the epidermis. It has shown inhibitory activity against a-glucosidase (EC 3.2.1.20) and a-amylase (EC 3.2.1.1). Uddin et al., 2004[447]. 

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