A new component from blue honeyberry leaves and its anti-inflammatory activity

The blue honeyberry is an edible herb with abundant nutrition and therapeutic value. However, its leaves are usually discarded and remain unexploited, despite their purported anti-inflammatory effects. In this work, we investigated the components of blue honeyberry leaves using various chromatographic methods and evaluated their anti-inflammatory effects in cells. A new component (7) together with 20 known compounds were isolated and characterised from n-butanol fraction, in which caffeic acid methyl ester (5) significantly inhibited NO production with the IC₅₀ of 8.7 µM and the new component (2S, 4E, 6E)-10-hydroxy-2, 7-dimethyldecadienoic acid (7) moderately inhibited NO production with the IC₅₀ of 73.8 µM without inducing cytotoxicity, respectively. Moreover, the new principle significantly inhibited the expression of the interleulin-1β (IL-1β), interleulin-6 (IL-6), inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) genes.