Abstract The main objective of the current study was to investigate the components and antioxidant activity of essential oil extracted from Purple Eleutherococcus leaves (identified as Eleutherococcus simonii) (PEEO) by hydrodistillation (HD) and solid-phase microextraction (SPME). Fourteen chemical components were identified in PEEO using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), accounting for 41.21% of the total essential oil extracted by SPME, including isopropyl toluene, 4-methylene-1-(1-methylethyl) cyclohexene (3.24%), fumaric-red myrrh alcohol (2.94%), farnesol acetate (2.92%), etc. Forty-three compounds were identified by HD, accounting for 73.28% of the total essential oil extracted by HD, including α-Farnesene (3.4%), Hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester (1.28%), (α-Bisabolol (0.87%), etc. The antioxidant activity of PEEO was characterized for 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical, ABTS method and FRAP method, and the IC50 values were 1.125 mg/mL, 0.945 mg/mL and 0.862 mg/mL, respectively. The IC50 values for DPPH, ABTS and FRAP of essential oil were similar to those of ascorbic acid (VC; 0.853, 0.945 and 0.037 mg/mL). The results showed that the essential oil of PEEO has a high radical scavenging activity.

Abstract This study aimed to explore: 1) DNA methylation in the promoter regions of Wilms tumor gene 1 (WT1), NK6 transcription factor related locus 1 gene (NKX6-1) and Deleted in bladder cancer 1 (DBC1) gene in cervical cancer tissues of Uygur women in Xinjiang, and 2) the correlation of gene methylation with the infection of HPV16/18 viruses. We detected HPV16/18 infection in 43 normal cervical tissues, 30 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia lesions (CIN) and 48 cervical cancer tissues with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Methylation in the promoter regions of the WT1, NKX6-1 and DBC1 genes in the above-mentioned tissues was measured by methylation-specific PCR (MSP) and cloning sequencing. The expression level of these three genes was measured by real-time PCR (qPCR) in 10 methylation-positive cervical cancer tissues and 10 methylation-negative normal cervical tissues. We found that the infection of HPV16 in normal cervical tissues, CIN and cervical cancer tissues was 14.0, 36.7 and 66.7%, respectively. The infection of HPV18 was 0, 6.7 and 10.4%, respectively. The methylation rates of WT1, NKX6-1 and DBC1 genes were 7.0, 11.6 and 23.3% in normal cervical tissues, 36.7, 46.7 and 30.0% in CIN tissues, and 89.6, 77.1 and 85.4% in cervical cancer tissues. Furthermore, WT1, NKX6-1 and DBC1 genes were hypermethylated in the high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (CIN2, CIN3) and in the cervical cancer tissues with infection of HPV16/18 (both P< 0.05). The expression of WT1, NKX6-1 and DBC1 was significantly lower in the methylation-positive cervical cancer tissues than in methylation-negative normal cervical tissues. Our findings indicated that methylation in the promoter regions of WT1, NKX6-1 and DBC1 is correlated with cervical cancer tumorigenesis in Uygur women. The infection of HPV16/18 might be correlated with methylation in these genes. Gene inactivation caused by methylation might be related to the incidence and development of cervical cancer.