Isolation of aurantiamides from gomphrena celosioides C. Mart

In West Africa and Nigeria in particular, many virgin plants are still waiting to be evaluated for their medicinal importance. Claims of plants with folk medicinal applications need to be evaluated and verified. Gomphrena celosioides (family - Amaranthaceae) is a weed grown in lawns and the biological activity of the extract had earlier been established. In the present study, the plant was collected, air dried, ground and soxhlet extracted with n-hexane and two compounds were isolated from the flakes that were recovered from the n-hexane extract on cooling. Column chromatography using 5% chloroform in n-hexane effected the separation. The structures of the isolated compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic analysis using IR, NMR ((1)H and (13)C) and EI-MS. The compounds were found to be aurantiamide and aurantiamide acetate. This is the first report of isolation of these compounds in Gomphrena celosioides.