Antioxidative Constituents of the Aerial Parts of Galium spurium

glucosides (Salvatore et al. , 2000). Some iridoids (Deliorman et al. , 2001), anthraquinones (Koyama et al. , 1993) and fl a-vonoids (Cai et al. , 2009) were analyzed from G. spurium . Its aerial parts have been used for the treatment of the bones and sinews pain and hematuria. Crude extract of G. spurium was also used as a anticancer agent in folk medicine. It has been reported to have immunostimulant and anti-tumor activ-ity (Yoon et al. , 2005). However, information concerning the antioxidant activity of G. spurium is unavailable. This paper deals with the isolation and structural characterization of these compounds and their scavenging activity of the stable DPPH free radical and superoxide quenching activities. MATERIALS AND METHODS General experimental procedures NMR spectra were determined on a JEOL JMN-EX 400 spectrometer. Sephadex LH-20 was used for column chroma-tography (25-100 μm; Fluka, Buchs, Switzeland). Prep-HPLC was carried out on a Jaigel GS310 column (Tokyo, Japan). TLC was carried out on Merck (Darmstadt, Germany) pre-coated silica gel F