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Plant Source Foods
Published in Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy, Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy
Galangal is a perennial herb in the Zingiberaceae family. Galangal includes more than 200 species distributed in tropical and subtropical Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. However, only Lesser Galangal and Greater Galangal are the two species most used as both spice and medicinal herb (213–226). Lesser galangal has the taxonomic name Alpinia officinarum and is originated in Southeast China (Yunnan, Hainan isle), Vietnam, Laos, and Japan (Okinawa). Greater galangal, named Alpinia galanga, is native to Indonesia, and now cultivated in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, India), and in Australia and Hawaii (213–218). Different galangal species vary in their hotness and flavor. Flavor ranges from flowery to ginger-like to peppery-cinnamon. Greater Galangal rhizome has an orange-brown skin with pale yellow or white interior and is milder in flavor but larger in size (Figure 5.7). Lesser Galangal rhizome has a red-brown interior and fibrous texture. Both species can be eaten as fresh rhizome, sliced or powdered (213). Both the Greater and Lesser Galangal species have similar effects in cookery and medicine. Besides the two previous galangals, Kaempferia Galangal, another galangal species with red skin and white flesh in interior, is also sometimes used as a condiment and medicinal herb (213).
Increasing the Sensitivity of Adipocytes and Skeletal Muscle Cells to Insulin
Published in Christophe Wiart, Medicinal Plants in Asia for Metabolic Syndrome, 2017
Ethanol extract of Alpinia officinarum Hance given to C57BL/6J mice at 0.5% of high-fat diet at a for 8 weeks lowered body weight gain, and epididymal and perirenal fat pad weight.350 This regimen decreased plasma insulin to normal and doubled plasma leptin.350 This supplementation lowered hepatic triglycerides contents by 17% and attenuated hepatic cholesterol.350 The extract decreased the expression of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1, CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-α, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ in the epididymal fat pads and suppressed hepatic expression of CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-α, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ and fatty acid synthetase in the liver.350 From this extract galangin at 50 μM inhibited the accumulation of triglycerides in differentiating 3T3-L1 adipocytes with decreased expression of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1, CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-α, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ, and fatty acid synthetase.350
Sources of Essential Oils
Published in K. Hüsnü Can Başer, Gerhard Buchbauer, Handbook of Essential Oils, 2020
Chlodwig Franz, Johannes Novak
The ability to accumulate essential oils is not omnipresent in plants but scattered throughout the plant kingdom, in many cases, however, very frequent within—or a typical character of—certain plant families. From the taxonomical and systematic point of view, not the production of essential oils is the distinctive feature since this is a quite heterogeneous group of substances, but either the type of secretory containers (trichomes, oil glands, lysogenic cavities, or schizogenic oil ducts) or the biosynthetically specific group of substances, for example, mono- or sesquiterpenes and phenylpropenes; the more a substance is deduced in the biosynthetic pathway, the more specific it is for certain taxa: monoterpenes are typical for the genus Mentha, but menthol is characteristic for M. piperita and Mentha arvensis ssp. piperascens only; sesquiterpenes are common in the Achillea–millefolium complex, but only Achillea roseoalba (2×) and Achillea collina (4×) are able to produce matricine as precursor of (the artifact) chamazulene (Vetter et al., 1997). On the other hand, the phenylpropanoid eugenol, typical for cloves (S. aromaticum, Myrtaceae), can also be found in large amounts in distant species, for example, cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Lauraceae) or basil (Ocimum basilicum, Lamiaceae); as sources for anethole are known not only aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) and fennel (F. vulgare), which are both Apiaceae, but also star anise (Illicium verum, Illiciaceae), Clausena anisata (Rutaceae), Croton zehntneri (Euphorbiaceae), or Tagetes lucida (Asteraceae). Finally, eucalyptol (1,8-cineole)—named after its occurrence in Eucalyptus sp. (Myrtaceae)—may also be a main compound of the essential oil of galangal (Alpinia officinarum, Zingiberaceae), bay laurel (Laurus nobilis, Lauraceae), Japan pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum, Rutaceae), and a number of plants of the mint family, for example, sage (S. officinalis, Salvia fruticosa, Salvia lavandulifolia), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), and mints (Mentha sp.). Taking the aforementioned facts into consideration, chemotaxonomically relevant are (therefore) common or distinct pathways, typical fingerprints, and either main compounds or very specific even minor or trace substances (e.g., δ-3-carene to separate Citrus grandis from other Citrus sp. [Gonzalez et al., 2002]).
Herbal and Natural Dietary Products: Upcoming Therapeutic Approach for Prevention and Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Published in Nutrition and Cancer, 2021
Deepa S. Mandlik, Satish K. Mandlik
Alpinia officinarum is reported for several pharmacological activities like anti‐inflammatory, antioxidant, antiemetic, antimicrobial and cytotoxic actions (37). The diarylheptanoids obtained from the plant roots also indicated anti-cancerous activity against HepG2 hepatoma cancerous cells (38). The rhizome extract of A. officinarum and its constituents exhibited anti-cancerous potential against hepatoma cell lines. It might stimulate the apoptotic death of hepatoma cells in the intrinsic mitochondrial pathway through the stimulation of Bid and caspase-8 (39). Recent research also found that five components extracted from the rhizomes of A. officinarum exhibited a potent anti-inflammatory action on lipopolysaccharide-stimulated HepG2 cells. This component includes isorhamnetin, galangin, kaempferide and two diarylheptanoids. These compounds have down-regulated the dose-dependent gene expression of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β, and pro-inflammatory cytokines indicating the hopeful use in the management of certain inflammatory diseases (40). One of the research indicated that rhizome extract of A. officinarum can be used as a potential natural anti-cancerous agent against HCC with enhanced liver functions and reduced levels of alpha-fetoprotein in rats (41).
Protective effects of total flavonoids from Alpinia officinarum rhizoma against ethanol-induced gastric ulcer in vivo and in vitro
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2020
Kaiwen Lin, Yong Wang, Jingwen Gong, Yinfeng Tan, Tang Deng, Na Wei
Alpinia officinarum Hance (Zingiberaceae) is widely distributed in many tropical regions of Asia. In China, it is mainly distributed in Guangdong, Hainan and Yunnan. Its main chemical components are volatile oil, flavonoids and diarylheptanoids, which were found to treat digestive diseases such as indigestion, acid reflux and gastric ulcer. Many studies demonstrated its pharmacological activities, such as antibacterial (Zhang et al. 2010), antioxidant, (Ly et al. 2003), antitumor (Tabata et al. 2009) and anti-inflammatory effects (Lee et al. 2009). It has been proven that the extract of A. officinarum could be used as a beneficial medicine for ethanol-induced acute gastric injury (Wei et al. 2015) and indomethacin-induced gastric injury (Gong et al. 2018). In addition, it has been confirmed that the extract mainly contains galangin, kaempferol, 5-hydroxy-7-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-1-phenyl-3-heptanone (DPHA), 7-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-1-phenyl-4-ene-3-heptanone (DPHB) and 1,7-diphenyl-5-hydroxy-3-heptanone (DPHC). Among them, galangin and kaempferol are flavonoids. Therefore, we collected F-AOH by chemical separation and investigated its protective effect on ethanol-induced acute gastric injury, which provided a certain research basis on the effective components of F-AOH against gastric ulcer. Consequently, we evaluated the protective, healing and anti-inflammatory mechanisms of F-AOH in ethanol-induced acute gastric ulcer by conducting in vivo/in vitro experiments with histological and pathological examination and by using inflammatory factors as markers.
Development of galangal essential oil-based microemulsion gel for transdermal delivery of flurbiprofen: simultaneous permeability evaluation of flurbiprofen and 1,8-cineole
Published in Drug Development and Industrial Pharmacy, 2020
Jie Dong, Xue-min Zhu, Feng-ye Wu, Bing-qing Yang, Han Feng, Yun-fei Dong, Wei Gu, Jun Chen
Alpinia officinarum Hance, is now commonly found in South-East Asia [10]. Rhizoma Alpiniae Officinarum (Gaoliangjiang in Chinese) has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for thousands of years. The EO extracted from Rhizoma Alpiniae Officinarum, named as galangal essential oil (GEO), is known to exert antimicrobial activity [11]. In our previous study, GEO was found to exhibit the strongest penetration enhancement effect among eight EOs extracted from various traditional herbs [12]. 1,8-Cineole, the most commonly used oxygen-containing terpene as a PE [13], is the most abundant constituent of GEO [12].