Chinese herbology

The mold Monascus , also called red yeast rice, anka, or koji, has been used as the natural food coloring agent and food additives for more than 1000 years in Asian countries. It has also been used in Chinese herbology and traditional Chinese medicine due to its easing digestion and antiseptic effects. However, under different culture conditions, the ingredients in Monascus -fermented products may be changed. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the ingredients, as well as the bioactivities of Monascus -derived natural products, is important...

Camellia nitidissima C.W. Chi is a golden camellia recognized in Chinese herbology and widely used as tea and essential oil in Chinese communities. Due to its diverse pharmacological properties, it can be used to treat various diseases. However, unethical sellers adulterated the flower with other parts of Camellia nitidissima in their product. This study used an integrated tri-step infrared spectroscopy method and a chemometric approach to distinguish C. nitidissima 's flowers, leaves, and seeds. The three different parts of C...

Platycodon grandiflorum is currently mainly used in the treatment of lung issues such as ventilating the lung, resolving phlegm, benefiting pharynx and discharging pus in modern clinical practice. However, in Shennong Materia Medica Classic, the main applications of Platycodon grandiflora were for chest and hypocholic pain, abdominal fullness, intestinal ringing and anxiety palpitations. The considered efficacy of platycodon grandiflorum had changed dramatically since the Han Dynasty. Combing the records of platycodon grandiflorum in the literature of traditional Chinese herbs and comparing it with the clinical application of platycodon grandiflorum in the past dynasties, this paper found that the clinical application is the main factor affecting the effect change of platycodon grandiflorum and that the description of the efficacy of platycodon grandiflorum in the literature of Herbology is different from the actual application because of the complex interaction between the efficacy of prescription and drug efficacy...

The mold Monascus has been used as a natural food coloring agent and food additive for more than 1000 years in Asian countries. In Chinese herbology, it was also used for easing digestion and antiseptic effects. Through a thorough investigation of a citrinin-free strain: M. purpureus BCRC 38110, four azaphilones, three benzenoids, one benzofuranone, one 5',6'-dihydrospiro[isochromane-1,2'-pyran]-4'(3'H)-one derivative, two steroids, and six tetralones have been successfully identified. Among them, monapyridine A (1), monatetralones A-E (2-6), and monabenzofuranone (7) were first reported...

Rehmanniae Radix ( Dihuang in Chinese) is a commonly used medicinal herb in a long history, raw Dihuang, dried Dihuang, processed Dihuang and other varieties have been recorded in the classical prescriptions of past dynasties. In order to clarify the origin and variety evolution of different processed products of Dihuang in Chinese classical prescriptions, ancient herbal books were examined in this paper. Both ancient and modern Dihuang is derived from Rehmannia glutinosa Libosch . in Scrophulariaceae, and R ...

During past few decades, studies have demonstrated that particulate matter (PM) is the most serious environmental pollutant in industrial countries which mainly contributes for increasing prevalence of chronic respiratory inflammatory diseases. Healthy food supplements to prevent the inflammatory diseases are common and show notable effects. The effects of the extract of Pyrus nivalis, a common fruit and herbal medicine in Taiwan, on PM-induced airway inflammation in mice were investigated by feeding the extract orally for 21 days...

The prevalence of upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) in Taiwan is relatively higher than thatin Western countries. Aristolochic acid (AA), which is widely used in traditional Chinese herbology, is now recognized to be one of the carcinogens for UTUC. Numerous UTUC patients have chronic kidney diseases or end-stage renal diseases; however, little literature hasreported on theoncogenic pathway of AA-related UTUC. The aim of our study was to identify the potential target treatment for AA-related UTUC. Here, we established an AA pre-exposure followed bya 3-methylcholanthrene (MCA) stimulus tumorigenic cell model...

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been long practiced and is becoming ever more widely recognized as providing curative and/or healing treatments for a number of diseases and physiological conditions. This paper posits that herbal medicines used in TCM treatments may act through hormetic dose-response mechanisms. It is proposed that the stimulatory (i.e., low dose) and inhibitory (i.e., high dose) components of the hormetic dose response correspond to respective "regulating" and "curing" aspects of TCM herbal treatments...

Zhen Dan, the abbreviated form of Zhen Dan Sha, or called Zhu Sha (Cinnabar, HgS). It can be ruled out that Zhen Dan is the nickname of Qian Dan (Minium, Pb(3)O(4)) through the homologous formulas contrast. The prescriptions containing Zhen Dan in the Zheng lei ben cao ( Classified Materia Medica ) was put under the "attached prescriptions" of Qian Dan, while Zhong yao da ci dian ( Great Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica )and Zhong hua ben cao ( Chinese Herbology )all definitelyconfirmed that Zhen Dan is the other name of Qian Dan, which are wrong and should be corrected...

The formalization of expert knowledge enables a broad spectrum of applications employing ontologies as underlying technology. These include eLearning, Semantic Web and expert systems. However, the manual construction of such ontologies is time-consuming and thus expensive. Moreover, experts are often unfamiliar with the syntax and semantics of formal ontology languages such as OWL and usually have no experience in developing formal ontologies. To overcome these barriers, we developed a new method and tool, called Expert2OWL that provides efficient features to support the construction of OWL ontologies using GFO (General Formal Ontology) as a top-level ontology...

This article focuses the category status of Chinese herbal medicine in the United States where it has been mistakenly classifified as a dietary supplement. According to Yellow Emperor Canon of Internal Medicine (Huang Di Nei Jing), clinical treatment in broad sense is to apply certain poisonous medicines to fight against pathogeneses, by which all medicines have certain toxicity and side effect. From ancient times to modern society, all, or at least most, practitioners have used herbal medicine to treat patients' medical conditions...

The substantia gelatinosa (SG) of the trigeminal subnucleus caudalis (Vc) receives nociceptive afferent inputs from thin-myelinated A[Formula: see text] fibers and unmyelinated C fibers and has been shown to be involved in the processing of orofacial nociceptive information. Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (Huang-Qin, SbG), one of the 50 fundamental herbs of Chinese herbology, has been used historically as anti-inflammatory and antineoplastic medicine. Baicalin, one of the major compounds of SbG, has been reported to have neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects...

In China, the crude drug licorice ("kanzo" in Japanese, "gancao" in Chinese) has been used both dried and roasted as the situation demands from ancient times. The meaning of "roasted licorice" is simply roasted and honey-roasted in ancient and modern times, respectively. However, it is not clear medicinal purposes of processed licorice or why licorice processed with honey began to be used. We researched ancient literature and found that the main objective of roasting was to change the property of licorice from cool to warm (i...

The allegation of "Glycyrrhiza antagonistic to Sargassum, Euphorbia Pekinensis, Kansui, and Genkwa", being one of the hypotheses of "18 antagonisms" in TCM pharmacology, is referring to the antagonistic action among the Radix et Rhizoma Glycyrrhiza and Radix Euphorbiae Kansui, Radix Euphorbiae Pekinensis, Flos Genkwa, and Sargassum when compounded together in a single recipe. By reviewing its history concerted with modern knowledge, it can be found that the theory of "seven emotions" was originated from Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica; while the Variorum of the Classic of Materia Medica firstly and definitely records that Radix et Rhizoma Glycyrrhizae is forbidden to be used with Radix Kansui, Flos Genkwa, Radix Euphorbiae Pekinensis, Sargassum together in a single formula...

OBJECTIVE: Calculus bovis have been widely used in Chinese herbology for the treatment of hyperpyrexia, convulsions, and epilepsy. Nowadays, due to the limited source and high market price, the substitutes, artificial and in vitro cultured Calculus bovis, are getting more and more commonly used. The adulteration phenomenon is serious. Therefore, it is crucial to establish a fast and simple method in discriminating the natural, artificial and in vitro cultured Calculus bovis. Bile acids, one of the main active constituents, are taken as an important indicator for evaluating the quality of Calculus bovis and the substitutes...

In traditional Chinese medicine, it has long been thought that the medicinal effect of a crude drug can be modified by combination with other crude drugs. One well-known example is the combination of mirabilite (a purgative) and rhubarb (an anti-inflammatory and essentially anti-blood stasis drug). One description in the medicinal literature states that mirabilite has to be added after rhubarb has been decocted. Another description states that rhubarb needs to be processed with liquor when both crude drugs are used together...

CONTEXT:  Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (Labiatae) (SbG), one of the fifty fundamental herbs of Chinese herbology, has been reported to have anti-asthmatic, antifungal, antioxidative, and anti-inflammatory activities. OBJECTIVE:  This study was designed to determine the protective effects of the extract of SbG against the acrolein-induced oxidative stress in cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). MATERIALS AND METHODS:  The MTT reduction assay was employed to determine cell viability...

Given the unparalleled popularity of botanicals in the United States, it is safe to say that almost every psychopharmacological prescriber will see some patients using Chinese herbs. Data show that between 36% and 42% of Americans use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) each year and that persons suffering from depression and anxiety (67%) use CAM services significantly more than do their nonanxious and nondepressed counterparts (39%). This article gives an overview of several classical Chinese medical single herbs and herbal formulas commonly used for persons with psychiatric disorders and discusses some of the herbs that have the potential to interact with various pharmaceutical drugs...

The historical change in the botanical origin of the Chinese herbal drug Shan-zhu-yu, San-syu-yu in Japanese) was studied herbologically. The results obtained were as follows: The original plant, described in Shen-nong-ben-cao-jing written in the Hou-Han Dynasty (A.D. 25-220) and Wu-pu-ben-cao written in the Wei dynasty (A.D. 220-265), was Prunus pseudocerasus or an allied species such as P. tomentosa. However, the original plant described in Ming-yi-bie-lu, written in the same era, was thought to be Cornus officinalis; the fruit of which is used commonly today as Shan-zhu-yu...

AIM: Nephropathy associated with aristolochic acid (AA) has been documented by human and animal studies. Ancient Chinese herbology claimed to reduce toxicity in their mixtures. It was the objective of this study to determine the risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) associated with AA-related Chinese herbal products (CHP) or mixtures of herbs in a national cohort. METHODS: A retrospective follow-up study was conducted, using a systematic random sample (200 000 people) in the National Health Insurance reimbursement database during 1997-2002...