Study of Croatian non-aromatic naphthalane constituents with skeletons analogous to bioactive compounds

Non-aromatic Croatian naphthalane (NAN), shown to be efficace in the treatm ent of psoriasis vulgaris, was studied in order to improve our understandin g of its constituents, which may be potentially responsible for its bioacti vity. The components steranes and hopanes were analysed. Since NAN is a com plex mixture of hydrocarbons, high-resolution GC and GC-MS were applied as the methods of choice in the study. The GC chromatogram of NAN showed a rem arkable cluster in which sterane peaks prevail and composed 33 +/-1% of the sample. Identified steranes (by GC-MS) represented almost half of the clus ter (48%). They were in the range from norcholestanes up to propyl cholesta nes. The amount of alpha -steranes (8.9%) was higher than of beta -steranes (6.4%) and regular steranes (15.3%) dominated in the ratio 17:1 over the r earranged ones (0.9%). Steranes conserved the skeleton of bio-precursors an d remained analogues of bioactive compounds, such as of vitamins D and some hormones and corticosteroids. Pentacyclic hydrocarbons hopanes, as derivat ives of bacteriohopantetraol which is the physiological equivalent of chole sterol, made 4.7 +/-0.2% of NAN. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.