Ratania Krameria triandra is a shrub native to Peru that grows up to one metre high, belongs to the Krameriaceae family and has been used for centuries in traditional medicine against inflammation of the oral cavity.

It was discovered by Hipólito Ruiz López (1754 - 1815), a Spanish botanist who discovered the plant in 1799 in Huánuco, a town in the Peruvian Andes. 

The dried root of the plant is used. The roots consist of a main root that can grow up to 10 centimetres in length from which much longer secondary branching roots branch off. The flowers have four deep purple red petals.

Among the constituents of the root, benzofurans 1, 4-11 and 7,7′-epoxylignans 2 and 3 and ratanhiaphenol III have been isolated, which has the property of significantly increasing insulin-stimulated glucose uptake and is an inhibitor of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B, which is considered a valuable strategy to combat insulin resistance and type II diabetes (1).

The roots are extracted from both Ratania Krameria triandra and Krameria lappacea (Dombey) and are traditionally used against oropharyngeal inflammation (2)

Ratania studies

References__________________________________________________________________

(1) Heiss EH, Baumgartner L, Schwaiger S, Heredia RJ, Atanasov AG, Rollinger JM, Stuppner H, Dirsch VM. Ratanhiaphenol III from Ratanhiae radix is a PTP1B inhibitor. Planta Med. 2012 May;78(7):678-81. doi: 10.1055/s-0031-1298242.

(2) Baumgartner L, Schwaiger S, Stuppner H. Quantitative analysis of anti-inflammatory lignan derivatives in Ratanhiae radix and its tincture by HPLC-PDA and HPLC-MS. J Pharm Biomed Anal. 2011 Nov 1;56(3):546-52. doi: 10.1016/j.jpba.2011.06.016.