Anti-inflammatory Activities of Extracts of Cinnamomum porrectum (Roxb.) Kosterm. Wood (Thep-tha-ro).

Cinnamomum porrectum (Roxb.) Kosterm. (Thai name Thep-tha-ro) is a medicinal and aromatic tree mostly distributed throughout southern Thailand. It is traditionally used as spices, vegetable, carminative, tonic, febrifuge and postpartum care for being anti-inflammation whilst chemical components and its anti-inflammatory activity of this plant extracts were rarely reported.

To investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of the crude extracts from different extraction method of C. porrectum wood.

Steam distillation, maceration in 50% or 95% ethanol or decoction method were used for extraction. The extracts were obtained as oil, ethanolic or aqueous extracts, respectively. These extracts were tested in vitro for antiinflammatory activity using nitric inhibitory assay by determining the inhibitory activity on lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced nitric oxide production in RAW 264.7 cell lines.

The 50%, 95% ethanolic extracts of this plant showed high anti-inflammatory activity (IC50 values as 19.28±2.43 and 13.78±3.76 μg/ml, respectively), where water extract of this plant showed low anti-inflammatory activity (IC50 values >100 μg/ml), oily extracts showed cytotoxicity.

The results revealed that ethanolic extracts showed strong anti-inflammatory activity; therefore these extracts of Cinnamomum porrectum should be further developed as a health product for treatment of inflammation.