Abstracts from a scientific meeting on Natural antioxidants: current status and future prospects Organized by the Italian society of herbal science, 3 December 2005, Naples, Italy

Punica granatum L. (Punicaceae) fruits have beenwidely used in folk medicine; a number of therapeuticproperties of pomegranate preparations has been reported(Duke and Ayensu, 1985), including vermifugal,taenicidal, astringent, antispasmodic, antihysteric, diuretic,carminative, emmenagogue and antiinflammatory.More recently, De Nigris et al. (2005) reported thatpomegranate juice may exert a preventive role in atheroscleroticdisease. These actions have been ascribed tothe presence of anthocyanins, cyanidin, ellagitannins,punicalagin and vitamin C. It has been reported (Gilet al., 2000) that industrial pomegranate juice (obtainedfrom both arils and rinds) displays antioxidant activityagainst reactive oxygen species; this activity has beenfound to be higher than that of red wine and green tea;arils-only juice seems to be less active than whole fruitjuice. Further studies, including one from our group(Ricci et al., in press), dealt with the antioxidant activityof whole, arils or rinds pomegranate juices/extracts:however, these research works have been carried outexclusively in cell-free systems