摘要

We aimed to infer and determine the antioxidant activity of diosgenin from Dioscorea composita by employing the established in vitro hydroxyl free radical system. In this paper, the direct hydrolysis-extraction of diosgenin under biphasic reaction conditions was applied with a 1.5% yield of diosgenin. The antioxidant activity of diosgenin was initially determined by the Fenton reaction-methylene blue spectrophotometric method. Results indicate that the hydroxyl radical scavenging activity of diosgenin was more than that of L-ascorbic acid when the concentration of the scavenger was higher than 2.5 x 10(-3) mmol/l.