Compassion lettuce herb is primarily known for its content of sesquiterpene lactones. Along with them, the plant contains other significant groups of biologically active substances: triterpenoids, steroids, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, which make a corresponding contribution to the pharmacological activity of the plant.
In the search for alternative sources of rubber in plants of the Complexaceae family, compassion lettuce was also studied. For this purpose, latex was extracted from the stems of compassion lettuce and found to contain cis-1,4-polyisoprene rubber in dichloromethane extracts and sesquiterpene lactones in acetone extracts. The latex content of the rubber was found to be 2.2% and the resinous content from 11.4% to 12.9%
