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Sea buckthorn is the dried ripe fruit of plants in the Elaeagnaceae family. It is a commonly used medicinal and edible material in China, as well as an important source of dietary supplements and health care products in India, Russia, Finland, and other European countries because of its properties of invigorating the spleen to aid digestion, relieving cough and expelling phlegm, promoting blood circulation, and dissipating blood stasis1. Sea buckthorn contains a rich array of bioactive components, such as flavonoids, phenolic compounds, polysaccharides, glycosides, and organic acids, and has a long-standing history of application in traditional Chinese medicine2,3.Generally, flavonoids are considered the most important bioactive compounds of sea buckthorn. However, polysaccharides have been recently recognized to also possess excellent physiological and pharmacological activities and have therefore attracted the attention of scientific researchers. Sea buckthorn polysaccharides have been demonstrated to have activities in regulating the immune system, protecting the liver, and regulating lipid metabolism disorders and intestinal microbiota, as well as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, and hypoglycemic effects4,5,6. They can act as natural antioxidants, thus enabling the development of novel functional foods and pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, sea buckthorn polysaccharides are also liable to decomposition by gastric acid, which is beneficial to the absorption and utilization of nutrients in the human body7,8.
Hot water extraction (HWE), microwave-assisted extraction, and ultrasonic-assisted extraction are the commonly used methods for the extraction of sea buckthorn polysaccharides9. The structures of polysaccharides obtained through different extraction methods vary10in terms of monosaccharide composition, molecular weight (Mw), branching degree, uronic acid content, glycosidic linkage types, and trihelix conformation11,12. Generally, high-Mw polysaccharide solutions possess high viscosity and low solubility, which may affect their biological activities and applications13. HWE is the most commonly employed technique for polysaccharide extraction in laboratory and industrial settings owing to its advantage of simplicity14,15. Moreover, it is one of the most commonly used extraction methods for sea buckthorn polysaccharides9. Therefore, in this study, polysaccharides were extracted through HWE. The primary methods for determining polysaccharide content include the phenol-sulfuric acid and anthrone-sulfuric acid methods16,17,18,19. The phenol-sulfuric acid method is extensively applied because of its simple detection procedure, good stability, and high sensitivity20. Wen et al. determined the content of polysaccharides extracted from sea buckthorn through the phenol-sulfuric acid method21. Therefore, in this experiment, the content of polysaccharides was determined by using the phenol-sulfuric acid method. The depth of the orange compound solution formed after the phenol-sulfuric acid reaction is proportional to the content of polysaccharides and can be determined at a wavelength of 490 nm22.
Natural polysaccharides exhibit remarkable antioxidant activities in vivo and in vitro. Raspberry polysaccharides may alleviate oxidative stress in high-fat diet models by regulating the gut microbiota23. Polysaccharides are the main active components in Pueraria lobata and exhibit diverse biological activities, including antioxidation24. Dou et al. found that blackberry polysaccharides have physiological functions, such as antioxidation25. The antioxidant activity of polysaccharides is usually assessed on the basis of their ability to scavenge various free radicals, including 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), hydroxyl, and superoxide anion radicals, as well as their ABTS radical cation scavenging capacity26. DPPH analysis is widely used because it measures the ability of antioxidants to reduce violet DPPH radicals into pale-yellow, stable molecules through hydrogen atom transfer27. The remaining violet DPPH radicals are quantified by using a ultraviolet (UV)-visible (Vis) spectrophotometer at approximately 515-520 nm to determine antioxidant activity28,29.
Previous studies have investigated the content and antioxidant activity of sea buckthorn polysaccharides21. However, the vast majority of these studies were limited to Hippophae rhamnoides subsp. sinensis. It is the most frequently utilized and widely distributed Hippophae species in China and is officially recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Studies on Hipphophae gyantsensis, a species endemic to Xizang, China, that is frequently employed in Tibetan medicine and documented in the Sichuan Provincial Catalogue of Tibetan Medicinal Materials, have rarely been reported. In addition, no research has compared the contents and antioxidant activities of polysaccharides from different Hippophae species, namely, H. rhamnoides subsp. sinensis and H. gyantsensis. Therefore, this study first compares the polysaccharide contents of H. rhamnoides subsp. sinensis and H. gyantsensis extracted through HWE and quantified through phenol-sulfuric acid colorimetry. The antioxidant activities of polysaccharides from these two Hippophae species were further investigated through DPPH free radical scavenging assays. The present study is expected to provide scientific data for the quality evaluation and further development of the active polysaccharide components of the above two Hippophae species.