TRITERPENES FROM ALGERIAN SAHARAN PLANT Euphorbia retusa WITH ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY

Abstract

In the course of our studies on bioactive constituents from medicinal and aromatic plants, present work was carried out on Euphorbia retusa Forsk. (Family Euphorbiaceae). Euphorbia is the largest genus of the family and comprises about 1000 species distributed throughout the Mediterranean region. It is used in Algerian folk medicine against the venomous bites and trichiasis and is known as remedy against warts. Like the other species of the genus Euphorbia, this species is characterized by the presence of milky irritant latex which is very rich in tetracyclic triterpene compounds. We report herein the isolation and structure elucidation of several triterpenes type cycloartane as 24- methylenecycloartanol (1), 24-methylenecycloartanyl palmitate (2), 24-methylenecycloartanyl acetate (3), 24-methylenecycloartanone (4), cycloeu-calenol (5) cycloeucalenyl acetate (6), cycloartenol (7) and cycloart-25-ene-3β,24-diol (8) from the dichloromethane extract of the roots of E. retusa. Structures of the isolated compounds were determined of spectroscopic analysis including various two dimensional NMR (COSY, HSQC, HMBC and NOESY) and mass spectrometry EI-MS and ESI-MS and by comparison with literature data. The compounds 1, 5, 7 and 8 exhibited antibacterial activity