Anti-inflammatory flavanol glycosides from Saraca asoca bark.

Saraca asoca (Roxb.) de Wilde, a common tree of India, is popularly used in the Ayurvedic and modern herbal systems of medicine for genito-urinary problems of women. Considering the reported antimicrobial or anti-inflammatory effect of S. asoca bark against such infections, we studied the anti-inflammatory activity-guided isolation of active compounds from methanol extract. The methanol extract of bark has yielded 10 compounds out of which 3'-deoxyepicatechin-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (6) and 3'-deoxycatechin-3-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside (8) have been found to be in vitro and in vivo active. 3',5-Dimethoxy epicatechin (3), 3'-deoxyepicatechin-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (6), 3'-deoxycatechin-3-O-α-L-rhamnopyranoside (8) and epigallocatechin (9) are being reported for the first time from S. asoca.