Bitter melon, Momordica charantia, grows in tropical areas including parts of East Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South America; it is used as a food as well as a medicine. The fruit of this plant lives up to its name with a distinctly bitter taste. As a relatively common food item, bitter melon was used in traditional medicine for an array of conditions by people in tropical regions to help treat ailments such as hyperlipidemia, digestive disorders, microbial infections. Although the seeds, leaves, and vines of bitter melon have all been used, the fruit is the most prevalent part of the plant used medicinally. The leaves and fruit have both been used in Europe and the U.S. to make teas and beer, to season soups, and increasingly in herbal medicines and dietary supplements.
The researchers here studied the chemical composition of bitter melon samples from Romanian greenhouses and also from outdoor cultivation sites in India. The objective of the study was to develop and validate an RP-HPLC-DAD method for the quantitative determination of the charantin in bitter melon plant materials and finished herbal products.
