Preparation of medicinally active extracts and phytochemical characterisation of phytoconstituents from medicinal plants

Abstract

Medicinal plants contain many bioactive compounds that are often hosted in medicinally active extracts generated from their various parts. The quest for reliable products from medicinal plants escalated in recent years as an answer to emerging health complications and the much-needed sufficient scientific backing that is dependent on proper preparation and characterisation principles of active extracts. This study described the Soxhlet and the maceration methods that are used to process extracts from the inert materials of medicinal plants using appropriate biocompatible solvents, the phytochemical screening assays, and TLC, UV spectrometry, FT-IR, and GC-MS techniques used in phytochemical studies. These techniques are crucial in studies that are meant to explore the active components of medicinal plants and their relative pharmacological effects. This information can be used as a guide when formulating effective yet less toxic plant-derived drugs and provide opportunities to upgrade while reducing further complexity in phytochemical studies.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Medicinal plants
• bioactive compounds
• active extracts
• pharmacological effects

Authors’ contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: LM and JL. Performed the experiments: FS. Analysed the data: FS, JL, and LM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LM and JL. Wrote the paper: FS, JL, and LM. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The main article (with results) in which the described protocol/methodology was used can be found at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272457 and the supplementary material (with the experimental section and supporting tables as well as figures) are provided with this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.