Antioxidant activity of polyphenol-enriched fractions from Agrimonia Eupatoria L. infusion

Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria L.) is used in traditional medicine as infusion, decoction and tincture for oxidative stress-related diseases. In our previous works, we found that agrimony infusion has significant scavenging capacity against the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical, eventually related to their phenolic compounds, namely tannins and flavonoids, such as flavan-3-ols, flavonols and flavones derivatives¹. The aim of this work was to evaluate the contribution of the phenolic compounds for the antioxidant activity, by using two different radical scavenging assays: DPPH and superoxide anion. A polyphenol-enriched fraction (AePEF) and two sub-fractions (FI, containing phenolic acids and tannins, and FII, containing flavonoids) were obtained from the infusion fractioning. Both AePEF and FII exhibited a marked activity against the DPPH and superoxide radicals. In conclusion, our results point that the agrimony flavonoids significantly contribute for antioxidant activity, which could be good candidates for the treatment of inflammation and cancer.