Evaluation of total phenolic and flavonoid contents, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of aqueous extract from Keang-hleung paste extract and its ingredients

Physicians have recommended low calorie diets to Thais who are concerned about their body weight, high blood pressure and diabetes. For instance, sour curry dishes rather than coconut food dishes. Southern sour curry or Keang-hleung paste is claimed as a healthy food because of various spices used in the paste which include garlic, shallot, dried finger chillies, and turmeric. However, there is quite few information about functional properties of mixed ingredients as curry paste available in scientific database. Therefore, the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of the used ingredients in the curry paste were studied. The paste showed very high level of total phenolic (14.20±0.04 mg GAE/g sample), and flavonoid (1.76±0.03 mg CE/g sample) contents. It also exhibited DPPH radical scavenging (11.81±0.14 mg GAE/g sample) and metal chelating activities (3.86±0.81 mg EDTA/g sample) but no FRAP activity in the individual ingredients. Total phenolic and total flavonoid contents, DPPH scavenging, FRAP and metal chelating activities of the paste decreased when heating time was increased to 100 °C and 121°C. In addition, turmeric had the best anti-inflammatory activity (IC50=0.045 gg/ml) on macrophage RAW264.7 cell line, followed by dried finger chilies (IC50=0.İ32 gg/ml) and the paste (IC =32.680 gg/ml).