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Inhibitory effect of plant essential oils on α-glucosidase

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Abstract

Diabetes mellitus, associated with α-glucosidase, has been considered as a chronic metabolic disorder, seriously affecting human health. Thus, searching natural α-glucosidase inhibitors and investigating their inhibition mechanism are urgently important. In this study, sixty-two essential oils (EOs), derived from aromatic plants, were found to exert different inhibition on α-glucosidase. The further study revealed that the most potent EOs against α-glucosidase were chuan-xiong, fructus cnidii, sacha inchi, aloe, ganoderma lucidum spore and ginger with IC50 values of 3.02, 2.88, 7.37, 5.06, 5.32 and 7.40 μg/mL. Moreover, the inhibitory mechanism and kinetics studies found that chuan-xiong and sacha inchi were reversible and mixed-type inhibitors. Fructus cnidii, aloe, ganoderma lucidum spore and ginger were reversible and uncompetitive-type inhibitors. It is suggested that EOs, being of natural origin, would be promising anti-α-glucosidase agents.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2019A1515110941), the Basic and Theoretical Research Programs of Science and Technology Foundation of Jiangmen (No. 2020JC01013 and 2021A7), and the Joint Fund of Wuyi University-Macau (No. 2019WGALH01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biotechnology and Health Sciences, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, 529020, China

    Zonglin You, Kun Zhang, Xi Zheng & Wenfeng Liu

  2. School of Eco-Environment Technology, Guangdong Industry Polytechnic, Guangzhou, 510300, China

    Yonglian Li

  3. Dr. Neher’s Biophysics Laboratory for Innovative Drug Discovery, State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China

    Vincent Kam Wai Wong

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  1. Zonglin You
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  2. Yonglian Li
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  3. Kun Zhang
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  4. Xi Zheng
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  5. Vincent Kam Wai Wong
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  6. Wenfeng Liu
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Contributions

WL designed the experiments; ZY and YL conducted the experiments; WL and XZ analyzed the data; WL wrote the manuscript; while KZ, XZ and VKWW revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wenfeng Liu.

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You, Z., Li, Y., Zhang, K. et al. Inhibitory effect of plant essential oils on α-glucosidase. Food Sci Biotechnol 31, 1593–1602 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-022-01145-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-022-01145-5

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