ABSTRACT
Arctium lappa L. (Asteraceae) is a Japanese plant and introduced in Brazil, which is widely used in popular medicine worldwide, as a diuretic and antipyretic tea as well as for hypertension, gout, hepatitis and other inflammatory disorders [1,2]. The root has long been cultivated as a popular vegetable for dietary use and folk medicine [3,4]. A. lappa tea has become a promising and important beverage, because of ample therapeutic activity [3]. In the literature, many health benefits have been reported due to different classes of bioactive secondary metabolites. These classes include, among others, flavonoids and lignans, for which A. lappa is an important natural source [5]. Pharmacological studies and clinical trials indicated that burdock roots have hepatoprotective [3,6], anti-inflammatory [7] and free radical scavenging activities [7,8] attributed to the presence of caffeoylquinic acid derivatives [9]. Recently, antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of lignans from A. lappa were described for leukemic cells [10]
as well as antitumor effects of arctigenin on pancreatic cancer cell lines [11]. Consumption of dietary antioxidants from plant materials has been associated with lower incidence of diseases due to reduction of oxidative stress. Thus the aim of this study was to determine the total phenolic content by the FolinCiocalteau method, to evaluate the the antiradicalar properties based on their ability to quench the stable radical 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and in vitro antiproliferative activity of eight different A. lappa root extracts.
