Flavonoids from the whole plants of limonium sinense and their anti-inflammatory activity.

Medicinal plants in the high salinity and high alkaline environment might possess some special chemical constituents with new skeleton and high bioactivity. In this work, the main chemical constituents of Limonium sinense, namely flavonoids, were comprehensively studied for the first time. A new flavonoid together with five known compounds were isolated from the whole plants of L. sinense. Their structures were determined by the analysis of comprehensive spectroscopic data. All isolates were evaluated for their anti-inflammatory activity. Compound 1 exhibited moderate anti-inflammatory activity on NO production with IC50 value of 20.5 ± 1.3 μM. In addition, 38 flavonoids were identified by UPLC-MS/MS method and 18 reported flavonoids were summarised.