Flavonoids from the arial parts of Artemisia agryi and their antioxidant capacity through GSH recovery effect

The arial parts of Artemisia argyi were extracted with methanol: water (70:30), and the concentrates was partitioned into EtOAc (ethyl acetate), n-BuOH (normal butanol), and H₂O (water) fractions. The repeated silica gel and ODS (octadecyl silica gel) column chromatographies for EtOAc and n-BuOH fractions led to isolation of four flavonoids without any ambiguity based on intensive interpretation of several spectroscopic data including nuclear magnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry. The chemical structure of the isolated compounds revealed to (2S)-naringenin (1), 3-methylkaempferol (2), 3,3′-dimethyl-quercetin (3), and 3,3′,4′-trimethylquercetin (4). These four compounds were first isolated from A. argyi through this study. In this study, four compounds isolated from A. argyi showed an increase in glutathione mean and a decrease in glutathione heterogeneity so that the compounds uniformly raised the intracellular glutathione (GSH) level. Based on these results, it is considered that it can be used as a functional pharmacological material.