Fitoquimica

Food and Chemical Toxicology 46 (2008) 2770–2775

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Food and Chemical Toxicology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodchemtox

Concentrations of p-synephrine in fruits and leaves of Citrus species (Rutaceae) and the acute toxicity testing of Citrus aurantium extract and p-synephrine
M.D. Arbo a, E.R. Larentis a, V.M. Linck a, A.L. Aboy a, A.L. Pimentel b, A.T. Henriques a, E. Dallegrave c, S.C. Garcia d, M.B. Leal b, R.P. Limberger a,*
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Farmacêuticas, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Ipiranga, 2752, Cep: 90610-000, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil b Departamento de Farmacologia, Instituto de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Rua Sarmento Leite, 500/202, Cep: 90050-170, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil c Centro de Informações Toxicológicas do Rio Grande do Sul, Fundação Estadual de Produção e Pesquisa em Saúde, Rua Domingos Crescêncio, 8° andar, Cep: 90650-090, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil d Departamento de Análises Clínicas e Toxicológicas, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria C.P. 5061, Campus Universitário, Cep: 97110-970, Santa Maria, RS, Brazil a a r t i c l e

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a b s t r a c t
Dietary supplements containing bitter orange unripe fruit extract/p-synephrine are consumed worldwide for lose weight. This study were conducted to determine the concentration of p-synephrine in unripe fruits and leaves from Citrus aurantium Lin, C. sinensis Osbeck, C. deliciosa Ten, C. limon Burm and C. limonia Osbeck, collected in Southern Brazil, and to evaluate the acute toxicity of C. aurantium extract and p-synephrine. A high performance liquid chromatographic method with diode array detector (HPLCDAD) was optimized and validated for determination of p-synephrine. The results indicate that all of analyzed samples present p-synephrine in amounts that range from 0.012% to 0.099% in the unripe fruits and 0.029 to 0.438% in