Anti‐myocardial Ischemia Effect and Components of Litchi Pericarp Extracts

Litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) is a famous fruit in south China, and it is also effective for chest tightness or chest pain, irritability, flatulence, epigastric pain and neuralgic pain, hernia pain and testicular swelling, cough, etc. It is valued because a great amount of polyphenol was found in litchi pericarp. In this paper, we got litchi pericarp pure extract by a simple purification method, then evaluated its activity to clear oxygen free radicals in vitro , and evaluated its myocardial protection effect in vivo through acute myocardial ischemia rat model. The results showed that the pure extract had protective effect on myocardial ischemia injury in a certain dose–effect relationship, which reflected in the electrocardiogram, myocardial pathological morphology and other indicators such as cardiac function enzymes, serum and myocardial antioxidant capacity, and eNOS, Bcl‐2 and Bax gene expression. Furthermore, we analyzed the components of pure extract by UPLC‐MS, ESI‐MS and NMR. The main components of PLPE were procyanidin which were identified as procyanidin B2(1), (?)‐epicatechin(2), epicatechin‐(4β → 8,2β → O → 7)‐epicatechin‐(4β → 8)‐epicatechin(3), A‐type procyanidin trimer(4), B‐type procyanidin dimer(5) and procyanidin A2(6).This study proved that litchi pericarp extract may have antioxidant activity and cardioprotection effect. It suggested that litchi pericarp may be good for cardiovascular disease. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.