Phytochemical investigation of five herbal teas useful in mental disorders treatment

Mental disorders or illnesses are common and affect all countries. According to official estimates, in most countries at least one person in three is affected. Several researches have shown the benefits of plants in the management of these pathologies. This study focuses on five medicinal plants useful in the management of mental disorders, including Cymbopogon citratus, Lippia chevalieri, Combretum micratum, Chrysantellum americanum and Tetrapleura tetraptera. These plants are used in Burkina Faso in the form of herbal teas. The objective of this study is to enhance the value of these plants and improve their use by some physico-chemical analyses, a phytochemical study and the determination of antioxidant activity. Among the parameters that will be precisely investigated there are organoleptic analysis, moisture content, extraction yields, thin layer chromatographic fingerprinting, phytochemical screening and the determination of total phenol, total flavonoids. The DPPH method was used to evaluate the antioxidant power of the various aqueous extracts. The physico-chemical analysis gave satisfactory results on the main indices. The phytochemical study allowed to establish the chromatographic fingerprints of the aqueous extracts, to identify the main bioactive secondary metabolites and to determine the content of total phenols and total flavonoids in the extracts of the five plants. Interesting results are obtained, which confirms the use of these plants. Among the samples submitted to the different analyses, the extract of Combretum micratum presented high levels of total phenolics (395,38 ± 7,05 mg GAE/g extract) and total flavonoids (105,87 ± 0,05 mg Ru E/g extract). This extract also exhibited the highest antiradical activity.