Search

The pits of Japanese apricot, Prunus mume Sieb. et Zucc., which are composed of stones, husks, kernels, and seeds, are unused by-products of the processing industry in Japan. The processing of Japanese apricot fruits generates huge amounts of waste pits, which are disposed of in landfills or, to a lesser extent, burned to form charcoal. Mume stones mainly consist of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Herein, we attempted to solubilize the wood-like carapace (stone) encasing the pit by subcritical fluid extraction with the aim of extracting useful chemicals. The characteristics of the main phenolic constituents were elucidated by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses. The degrees of solubility for various treatments (190 °C, 3 h) were determined as follows: subcritical water (54.9%), subcritical 50% methanol (65.5%), subcritical 90% methanol (37.6%), subcritical methanol (23.6%), and subcritical isopropyl alcohol (14.4%). Syringaldehyde, sinapyl alcohol, coniferyl alcohol methyl ether, sinapyl alcohol methyl ether, 5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-furfural, and furfural were present in the subcritical 90% methanol extract. Coniferyl and sinapyl alcohols (monolignols) are source materials for the biosynthesis of lignin, and syringaldehyde occur in trace amounts in wood. Our current findings provide a solubilization method that allows the main phenolic constituents of the pits to be extracted under mild conditions. This technique for obtaining subcritical extracts shows great potential for further applications.

Orofacial pain is often difficult to diagnose and treat. However, there have been few reports on the clinical observation of dental patients with orofacial pain. We retrospectively investigated the characteristics of 221 dental patients who had suffered from persistent orofacial pain. Data were collected from the outpatient medical records in our clinic over the past 12 years. More than half of the patients (53.8%) had suffered with pain for more than 6 months from pain onset until the first visit to our clinic. The main diagnoses were neuropathic pain (30.3%), myofascial pain (23.5%), psychogenic pain (20.4%), odontogenic toothache (17.2%), and others (7.7%) such as temporomandibular disorders and glossitis. The treatments included pharmacotherapy, splint therapy, and others such as nerve block, dental treatment, physiotherapy, and/or psychotherapy. Excluding the patients (52 of 221 initially enrolled patients) with unknown responses to treatment, 65.7% showed remission or a significant improvement in pain in response to treatment. Although only a small group of patients had odontogenic toothache, the rate of improvement was highest for this disorder. In conclusion, early consultation with a dentist is useful to prevent chronicity of odontogenic pain and to make a differential diagnosis in patients with orofacial pain.

The fruit of mume, Japanese apricot (Prunus mume Sieb. et Zucc.), was evaluated for its phenolics content, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) profile and antioxidative activities. The phenolics content of mume fruit was relatively high, the flesh of fully matured fruit containing up to 1% of phenolics on a dry weight basis. Reflecting such a high content of phenolics, the ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value for mume fruit flesh showed high values, ranging from 150 to 320 µmol/g Trolox equivalent, depending upon the stage of maturation. 5-O-Caffeoylqunic acid (chlorogenic acid), 3-O-caffeoylquinic acid and tetra-O-acylated sucrose-related compounds were isolated from the flesh of mume fruit, although many unknown peaks were also apparent in the HPLC chromatogram. An alkali hydrolysate comprised four main phenolic acids, caffeic acid, cis/trans-p-coumaric acid and ferulic acid. No flavonoids were observed in the analysis. These results suggest that the majority of phenolics in mume fruit were hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives.