9 / 38
Pharmacognosy 2018
American Journal of Ethnomedicine
ISSN: 2348-9502
Page 28
April 16-17, 2018
Amsterdam, Netherlands
6
th
Edition of International Conference on
Pharmacognosy and
Medicinal Plants
Background:
Harpagophytum procumbens
(the preferred
species) has traditionally been used as a treatment for
inflammation, fever and in some cases malaria. Due to the
commercial demand and unsustainable harvesting techniques,
the industry is subjected to the possibility of substitution
with the more inferior species,
H. zeyheri
. Granting that
several pharmacopeias allow the use of either
H. zeyheri
or
H. procumbens, the pharmacological effect on consumers
(patients) and the equivalence of this interchangeable use
has not been studied. The industry is starting to explore
DNA barcoding as a method for quality control of botanical
medicines.
Results:
In this study, we explored the potential application
of DNA barcoding to determine authenticity in commercial
products. Authentic botanical reference material of both
H.
procumbens
(n=30) and
H. zeyheri
(n=20) were obtained. A total
of 10 commercial products were purchased on the internet in
2016 using the search term “Harpagophytum” or “Devil’s Claw”.
The two barcoding regions
(rbcLa
and
matK
) and the additional
plastid region trnL-F was first used to construct a standard
reference barcode library for the genus Harpagophytum, and
secondly to barcode the purchased herbal products claiming
to contain Harpagophytum. The barcode library was able to
authenticate all commercial products (query samples) up
to species level. Furthermore, the character based (BRONX)
analysis was performed to verify taxonomic identity of the
query samples. BRONX results indicated that 69% of the
commercial samples tested, labeled as
H. procumbens
were
substituted with
H. zeyheri
.
Significance:
Our study is the first to construct a reference
barcode library for Harpagophytum. This approach of DNA
barcoding could significantly support the authentication of
herbal products containing
Harpagophytum
spp.
esthernap@uj.ac.zaDetermining the level of substitution in herbal products
containing Harpagophytum spp. through a standard reference
barcode library
E Pretorius
1
, M van der Bank
1
, R M Kabongo
1
and
A M Viljoen
2
1
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
2
Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa
E Pretorius et al., Am J Ethnomed 2018, Volume 5
DOI: 10.21767/2348-9502-C1-005