Preliminary Qualitative Phytochemical Screening and Isolation of Sitosterol and Sitostinone from Dieffenbachia Seguine Stem Bark

Purpose: Plant kingdom has long served as a prolific source of useful drugs, foods additives, flavouring agents, colourants, binders, and lubricants. Dieffenbachia seguine (Areceae is claimed to have many folklore uses. Primarily it is used as an ornamental and sometimes employed for medicinal and other miscellaneous uses). The stem and root extracts have been described as a narcotic, a gastric and kidney irritant and historically used as arrow poisons, pounded. It is used as a choleretic, female aphrodisiac, and contraceptive and to treat dropsy, gout, dysmenorrhea, impotence, and sterility. The present study aimed at carrying out phytochemical screening and purification of extracts of the plant. Materials and Methods: Powdered sample of the plant was extracted successively with hexane, ethylacetate and methanol. Findings: Preliminary qualitative phytochemical screening showed presence of flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, glycosides, anthraquinones, steroids and triterpenoids. Saponins was however, was not detected in any of the extracts. The hexane and ethyl acetate extracts (2 g) were subjected to silica gel (70-230 mesh) column chromatography and similar fractions were pulled together through thin layer chromatography analysis to obtain fractions Ds-1, Ds-2 and Ds-3 which were subjected to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Fractions Ds-1, Ds-2 and Ds-3 were identified as octadecanoic acid, sitosterol and β-sitostenone, respectively, based on analysis of NMR spectra and comparison with reported data. Dieffenbachia seguine extracts are rich sources of phytochemicals which can be purified for more compounds