Punica granatum is a tree of the Punicaceae family which is widespread all over the world with several types of varieties. Its fruit juice is highly prized, whereas the bark, rich in in phytochemicals such as flavonoids, hydrolysable tannins, phenolic acids, and fatty acids, is regarded an agro-industrial waste. It is utilized in traditional medicine for its medicinal properties in the treatment and prevention of a variety of ailments. This study aims to extract and to separate the phytochemical compounds from the bark of P. granatum, to identify them and to study the inhibitory effect of its extracts against antidiabetic activity. First, we carried out successive hot extractions with solvents (chloroform, acetone, methanol, and water) of increasing polarity by the Soxhlet. Then, using both qualitative and quantitative phytochemical investigation, we were able to identify groups of chemicals that were present in all extracts. We identified the majority of the molecular structures of chemicals found in each extract using HPLC-DAD analysis. The inhibition against both intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase enzymes by P. granatum extracts was used to evaluate their potential antidiabetic effect in vitro. Our results demonstrated the great potential of the acetone extract. Ellagic acid, (-)-catechin, vanillin and vanillic acid were proposed as the most active compounds by the correlation analysis, and their actions were confirmed through the calculation of their IC50 and the determination of their inhibition mechanisms by molecular modelling. To summarize, these results showed that P. granatum bark, a natural agro-industrial by-product, may constitute a promising option for antidiabetic therapeutic therapy.
Keywords: Punica granatum bark; acute toxicity; antidiabetic activity; phytochemical investigation; sequential extraction; α-glucosidase and α-amylase enzymes.