Galangal, the multipotent super spices: A comprehensive review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2020.04.032Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Medicinal herbs are one of the imperative sources of drugs all over the world.

  • A. galanga is highly appreciated for potential applications in food and medicine.

  • Treatment in hemorrhoids, abnormal menstruation, abdominal distress, inflammation.

  • Vast applications as antiviral, cardiovascular and neuroprotective properties.

  • This review aspires to integrate information on customary attributes of galangal.

Abstract

Background

Galangal is highly appreciated for its potential applications in food and medicine. In spite of its usage in food and herbal medicine in countries like Indonesia and Thailand, very limited data is accessible about its potential applications in therapeutics and pharmacology. It has been reported to be utilized in herbal medicines for treatment against diseases like hemorrhoids, abnormal menstruation, abdominal discomfort, and inflammation, among others.

Scope and approach

The widespread use of galangal in food and traditional medicine has fascinated researchers all over the world looking for its enhanced medicinal capabilities, new bioactive compounds with nutraceutical potentials, and probable uses in medicine and pharmacology. A number of literature search methods like searching the related contents with the keywords such as Alpinia sp., galangal, antiviral, cardiovascular, neuroprotective, bioactive compounds, phytochemicals etc. in the web search engines’ such as the Google search, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed etc. were implemented.

Key findings and conclusions

Conversely, there is no recent structured and ample review that summarizes the available data on these issues. In the current review, these topics are addressed in detail along with the investigation of scientific evidence supporting the vast applications of galangal in food and its medicinal properties, such as antiviral, cardiovascular and neuroprotective properties, together with the preclinical and clinical studies with galangal bioactive compounds.

Introduction

Alpinia galanga (L.) Willd. (Zingiberaceae), usually called galangal or greater galangal, is a perennial plant native of Indonesia but cultivated in many parts of Asia being Thailand and Indonesia the main producers and suppliers. This plant has multiple applications from food to medicine (Fig. 1). Galangal rhizomes are collected all over the year and employed in Asian gastronomy due to its spicy taste (Chudiwal, Jain, & Somani, 2010). A. officinarum Hance and A. calcarata Rosc. known as lesser galangal are two closely related species that have similar properties and uses of A. galanga, although this is the most important in terms of culinary uses. There is some confusion between the common terminologies galangal and galanga. Galangal designation is used to denominate A. galanga and its two closed related species A. officinarum Hance and A. calcarata Rosc., and galanga includes Kaempferia galanga L., an entirely different species (Ravindran, 2017).

Beyond its food uses, galangal has also been utilized for centuries in traditional medicine in several countries. In Ayurveda, Unani, Chinese and Thai folk medicine it is applied in the treatment of diarrhea and stomach-ache due to its carminative, stomachic, antispasmodic and antimicrobial properties (Mayachiew & Devahastin, 2008; X.; Yang & Eilerman, 1999). There are also reports about its traditional use to treat hemorrhoids, abnormal menstruation and abdominal discomfort (Abubakar, Malami, Yahaya, & Sule, 2018). In India, the galangal rhizome, usually called raasna, is applied in several Ayurvedic formulations to threat rheumatism and inflammatory disorders and is also employed for the treatment of other ailments such as diabetes, dementia and neurodegenerative diseases (L. Arambewela & Wijesinghe, 2006; L. S. Arambewela, Arawwawala, Owen, & Jarvis, 2007; Indrayan et al., 2009; Mundugaru, Sivanesan, Udaykumar, Prabhu, & Ravishankar, 2018; Ravindran, Pillai, Balachandran, & Divakaran, 2012). Galangal is one of the rejuvenator herbs included in preparations used to treat some chronic diseases (Srivastava & Shanker, 2012). Furthermore, this plant has also cosmetic and perfumery applications (Yang & Eilerman, 1999). Several classes of compounds have been found in galangal, including flavonoids, terpenoids, saponins, phenolic acids and essential oils (Aziman, Abdullah, Noor, Kamarudin, & Zulkifli, 2014; Chudiwal et al., 2010). The major bioactive compounds found are galangin, kaempferol, galangal acetate, and 1,8-cineole (Ghosh & Rangan, 2013; Hamad, Alifah, Permadi, & Hartanti, 2016; Jaju et al., 2009; Ravindran et al., 2012; Upadhye, Rajopadhye, & Dias, 2018). Although the galangal rhizome is the most used and investigated portion of the plant, the flowers can provide additional benefits since it was recently found that they have antioxidant and antimicrobial properties, and their chemical composition is distinct from that of rhizome (Tang, Xu, Yagiz, Simonne, & Marshall, 2018). According to this study, 1′-acetoxyeugenol acetate was the greatest compound found in flowers, and pentadecane and α-humulene the major presence in their essential oil.

The extensive use of galangal particularly in food and traditional medicine has attracted the attention of researchers seeking its medicinal properties, active compounds, mechanism of action and potential applications. However, there is no recent systematized and comprehensive review summarizing available data on these issues. In this review, we, therefore, address these topics in detail and evaluate scientific evidence supporting the food and therapeutic uses of these multipotent super spices.

Section snippets

Galangal in food

Galangal in food is mostly used in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, China, and Malaysia but it is also utilized in north-east regions of India and Western Europe. The rhizome is the principal portion of the plant with culinary applications providing a sweet spicy taste to many dishes particularly in shellfish preparations (Ravindran, 2017). Galangal rhizome is particularly used in the elaboration of Thai curry paste and soup (Juntachote, Berghofer, Siebenhandl, & Bauer, 2007). In Indonesia, this

Phytochemistry and constituents of Galangal

Alpinia galanga and Alpinia officinarum are two of the most common galangal species which are members of the Zingiberaceae family and are of current interest in many scientific studies due to their ethnobotanical use, medicinal and non-medicinal, in some parts of the world (Abubakar et al., 2018). These pharmacological attributes have been related to the phytochemical constituents in the different galangal species.

Phytochemicals are a heterogeneous group of compounds with a wide array of

Extraction of bioactive compounds from Galangal

Phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds and terpenes are of growing interest due to their potential health benefits in humans. The extraction of bioactive compounds from galangal has been reported by conventional and non-conventional methods, among the most widely reported are the conventional methods using chemical solvents. As is commonly known, the extraction of the non-polar compounds is usually performed with organic non-polar solvents such as acetone, hexane, chloroform, or a mix of

Anticancer, antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties of galangal

In Fig. 5, the structure of compounds extracted from A. officinarum can be observed. The first compound (7-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-1-phenyl-3-heptanonewhich) has a moderate level of anticancer activity (compared to 5-fluorouracil as control) with IC50 values less than 50 μg/mL against HepG2 and MCF-7 cancer cell line (Fig. 5) (Liu, Liu, Guan, & Liang, 2014).

The second compound (1,7-diphenyl-4-en-3-heptanone) has a very satisfactory platelet-activating factor (PAF) receptor binding antagonist activity

Preclinical and clinical studies on active compounds from Galangal

In one study to prevent in vivo two-stage carcinogenesis using mice model, it was demonstrated that bioactive diarylheptanoids present in methanol extract of galangal exhibited remarkable antitumor-promoting activity suggesting the future prospect to design anticancer drug using bioactive components of galangal (Yasukawa et al., 2008). Hot water-soluble polysaccharide extracts of A. galangal exhibited immune-stimulating activity as it very appreciably enhanced the proliferation of the murine

Challenges and future prospect associated with galangal

Medicinal plants like galangal are very important natural resources considering their disease healing properties and needs mass cultivation for their easy availability to industries and people who rely on herbal medicine. But due to rapid decrease in cultivable land, deterioting soil quality and unstable weather conditions, mass cultivation and conservation by conventional method has become an obstacle in the present scenario. To address this issue, in vitro conservation of micro-propagated

Conclusions

Galangal contains numerous bioactive compounds with varied pharmacological and medicinal properties. Despite the usage of galangal in food and herbal medicine in countries like Indonesia and Thailand, very limited data is available about its therapeutics and pharmacology. Significantly very limited reviews were found on the medicinal potential of this species with special reference to its antiviral, cardiovascular and neuroprotective effects, together with its preclinical and clinical studies.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of Science and ICT (2020R1G1A1004667), Republic of Korea.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Gitishree Das: Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Jayanta Kumar Patra: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Sandra Gonçalves: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Anabela Romano: Writing - review & editing. Erick P. Gutiérrez-Grijalva: Writing - review & editing. J. Basilio Heredia: Writing - original draft, Writing - review &

Acknowledgments

All authors are grateful to their respective institutions for support. G Das, JK Patra and HS Shin are grateful to Dongguk University, Republic of Korea for support. This work is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of Science and ICT (2020R1G1A1004667), Republic of Korea. Sandra Gonçalves is funded by national funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the Norma Transitória – DL

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