J Ethnopharmacol. 2012 Apr 10;140(3):482-91. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2012.01.050. Epub 2012 Feb 7.
Abstract
A
vast majority Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) are traditionally
administered as individually prepared water decoctions (tang) which are
rather complicated in practice and their dry extracts show technological
problems that hamper straight production of more convenient application
forms. Modernised extraction procedures may overcome these difficulties
but there is lack of clinical evidence supporting their therapeutic
equivalence to traditional decoctions and their quality can often not
solely be attributed to the single marker compounds that are usually
used for chemical extract optimisation. As demonstrated by the example
of the rather simple traditional TCM formula Danggui Buxue Tang, both
the chemical composition and the biological activity of extracts
resulting from traditional water decoction are influenced by details of
the extraction procedure and especially involve pharmacokinetic
synergism based on co-extraction. Hence, a more detailed knowledge about
the traditional extracts' chemical profiles and their impact on
biological activity is desirable in order to allow the development of
modernised extracts that factually contain the whole range of compounds
relevant for the efficacy of the traditional application. We propose
that these compounds can be identified by metabolomics based on
comprehensive fingerprint analysis of different extracts with known
biological activity. TCM offers a huge variety of traditional products
of the same botanical origin but with distinct therapeutic properties,
like differentially processed drugs and special daodi qualities. Through
this variety, TCM gives an ideal field for the application of
metabolomic techniques aiming at the identification of active
constituents.
Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.