Structure, Biological Activities and Metabolism of Flavonoid Glucuronides.

Background Flavonoid glucuronides are a kind of natural products which present a flavone linked directly with one or several glucuronides through O-glycoside bond. They had become of interest in natural product research in the past decades for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-bacteria activities. In particular, the compound breviscapine has a notable effect on cardio-cerebrovascular diseases. Several other compounds even have antitumor activity. Methods Through searching the database and reading a large number of documents, we summarized the related findings of flavonoid glucuronides. Results We summarized 211 naturally occurring flavonoid glucuronides in 119 references with their chemical structures, biological activities, and metabolism. A total of 220 references from 1953 to 2020 were cited in this paper according to literature databases such as CNKI, Weipu, Wanfang data, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, NCBI, PubMed, EmBase, etc.. Conclusion Flavonoid glucuronides are a class of compounds with various chemical structures and a diverse range of biological activities. And they are thought to be potential candidates for drug discovery, but the specific study on their mechanisms is still limited until now. We hope this article can provide references for natural product researchers and draw more attention to flavonoid glucuronides' biological activities and mechanisms.