Phytochemical Study on Aloe vera

Aloe plants have been used as herbal medicine for centuries and the name aloe means the dried exudate from the cut leaves of Aloe ferox Mill. (Cape aloe, Liliaceae), Aloe ferryi Baker. (Socotrine aloe), A. bainesii Th. Dyer. (Natal aloe) and Aloe vera L. (Curacao aloe) (Namba, 1986). Among them, Aloe vera has not only been one of the most used natural drug well known for its cathartic properties, but also has been widely used as raw materials of cosmetics and health foods (Leung, 1978, Hoffenberg, 1979). Although previous investigations showed that the leaves of A. vera contain a number of anthracene and chromone derivatives such as aloin A, aloin B, 1, 3, 6, 8-tetra-nitro-4,5-dihydroxy-2-hydroxymethyl anthraquinone and 7-hydroxy-aloin, its chemical composition is far from being completely investigated (Hoffenberg, 1979, Rauwald and Voetig, 1982). As a part of our chemical investigations on the constituents of aloe, we report chemical investigation of the freeze dried ground leaves of A. vera which is led to the isolation of five compounds from the ethyl acetate soluble fraction of the methanolic extract.