Polyphenolic composition and antioxidant activity of Uncaria tomentosa commercial bark products

Uncaria tomentosa, which is widely commercialized as an herbal medicine, constitutes an important source of secondary metabolites with diverse biological activities. For instance, we have previously reported, for the first time, of a polyphenolic profile rich in proanthocyanidins from extracts of U. tomentosa plants, as well as their antioxidant capacity, antimicrobial activity on aerial bacteria, and cytotoxicity on cancer cell lines. These promising results prompted this research to evaluate the polyphenolic contents of U. tomentosa commercial products. We report a detailed study on the polyphenolic composition of extracts from U. tomentosa bark products (n = 18) commercialized in Costa Rica and Spain. Using HPLC-DAD/TQ-ESI-MS, a total of 25 polyphenolic compounds were identified, including hydroxybenzoic and hydroxycinnamic acids, flavan-3-ol monomers, procyanidin dimers, procyanidin trimers, as well as propelargonidin dimers. Our findings on the polyphenolic profile for all commercial samples show analogous composition to previous reports on U. tomentosa bark material, for instance a 41–49% content of procyanidin dimers and the presence of propelargonidin dimers (8–15%). However, most of the 18 commercial samples exhibit low proanthocyanidin contents (254.8–602.8 µg/g), more similar to previous U. tomentosa inner bark reports, while some exhibit better results, with one sample (SP-2) showing the highest contents (2386.5 µg/g) representing twice the average value of all 18 commercial products. This sample also exhibits the highest total phenolics (TP) and total proanthocyanidins (PRO) contents, as well as the highest Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) value (1.31 µg TE/g). One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with a Tukey post hoc test indicated significant difference (p < 0.05) between products from Costa Rica and Spain for TP and PRO findings, with samples from Spain exhibiting a higher average value. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis results sho