Essential oils obtained from medicinal plants show high therapeutic potential against several types of pathologies, including Alzheimer's disease. The purpose of this work was to study the chemical composition and anticholinesterase inhibitory activity of the essential oil obtained from Lepisanthes rubiginosa leaves collected from Malaysia. Twenty-four components were identified using gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS), which represent 99.5% of the essential oil. The identified major components include α-cadinol (40.0%), safrole (12.6%), α-amorphene (9.5%), (E)-isosafrole (5.0%), δ-cadinene (4.2%), and t-muurolol (4.1%). Anticholinesterase activity was assessed using Ellman method, and the essential oil demonstrated a moderate inhibitory activity against acetylcholinesterase (I%: 75.2%) and butyrylcholinesterase (I%: 70.2%) at conconcetration of 1000 μg/mL. The current study is the first to report chemical composition and anticholinesterase activity of the essential oil obtained from L. rubiginosa, which may have implications on the characterization, pharmaceutical, and therapeutic applications of Lepisanthes genus essential oils.
Keywords: Lepisanthes rubiginosa; cholinesterase; essential oil; α-cadinol.
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