Analgesic and Antioxidant Activities of Algerian Retama raetam (Forssk.) Webb & Berthel Extracts

Part of this work deals with t he isolation and structure elucidation of the main polar secondary metabolites of the aerial parts of Retama raetam(Forssk.) Webb & Berthel, as well as the evaluation of their potential analgesic properties , while the rest deals with the antioxidant activities of the aqueous extracts of roots, stem, fruits and flowers of the plant . It was found that the isoflavones g enistein 1, 6-hydroxygenistein 2, 3'-O-methylorobol 3, pratensein 4, biochanin A 8, the flavones 6-hydroxyapigenin 7 and luteolin 5, the flavonol kaempferol 6,as well as the phenolic compound p-coumaric acid 9 reduce significantly the pain at a concentration dose of 1 mg/kg. The most active compounds were 3 and 8 (86.19% and 75.23%, respectively). The obtained aqueous extracts of R. raetam were also evaluated for their antioxidant activities using two different photometric methods; the results revealed that all extracts exerted very low free radical scavenging activity compared to the well-known butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and lower hydrogen peroxide blocking activity than positive control gallic acid.