Characterization of Biologically Active Compounds in Agrimonia eupatoria

Abstract

Agrimonia eupatoria is a plant widely used in traditional medicine due to its wide range of healing effects. These include, for example, the positive effect on the healing of chronic wounds which is attributed to the content of various bioactive substances but the exact mechanism of this effect of Agrimonia is not known. In this work, two differently prepared aqueous extracts of Agrimonia were analysed in order to describe the differences between their contents of bioactive substances. First extract was prepared by pouring hot water over Agrimonia with subsequent leaching; second extract (decoction) was prepared by boiling Agrimonia in water. Instrumental analysis of prepared extracts was performed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS/MS) and the target screening in extracts was performed according to the database of substances created by us from the data obtained from the literature. The database of substances contained 37 compounds from the groups of tannins, flavonoids and phenolic acids. Based on the analysis and identification of substances, the presence of 16 substances out of 37 was confirmed. The extracts showed minimal differences in the contents of substances, differing only in their total amount which was higher in the extract prepared by leaching.