Searching for New Natural Inhibitors of Acetylcholinesterase Enzyme

Abstract

Acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE) is the enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to choline. Inhibitors of this enzyme (AChE-i) are used to treat Alzheimer's, a neurodegenerative disease. Due to the side effects of the drugs used, there has been an increased interest in investigating the inhibitory potentials of natural products which are presumed to have fewer side effects. For this purpose, the inhibitory effects of highland honey, chestnut honey, royal jelly and the seeds of peach, cherry, plum and apricot on human erythrocyte AChE enzyme was investigated in vitro in the present study. Extracts of the seeds and bee products were prepared in ethanol solvent. In order to determine the inhibitory effect of the extracts, the inhibition concentration (IC50) and Ki values which cause 50% inhibition of the enzyme were calculated using the Ellman method. It was found that among the natural product extracts studied, peach seed had the highest inhibition level (IC50 value 0.05708 mg/ml). IC50 values of highland honey, royal jelly, plum seed and apricot seed were determined as 0.2555 (mg/mL), 0.300 (mg/mL), 0.7049 (mg/mL) and 0.4544 (mg/mL) respectively.