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Liver disease is one of the most risk factors threatening human health. It is of great significance to find drugs that can treat liver diseases, especially for acute and chronic hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and liver cancer. The search for drugs with good efficacy from traditional natural medicines has attracted more and more attention. Tibetan medicine, one of the China's traditional medical systems, has been widely used by the Tibetan people for the prevention and treatment of liver diseases for hundreds of years. The present paper summarized the natural Tibetan medicines that have been used in Tibetan traditional system of medicine to treat liver diseases by bibliographic investigation of 22 Tibetan medicine monographs and drug standards. One hundred and ninety three species including 181 plants, 7 animals, and 5 minerals were found to treat liver diseases in traditional Tibetan medicine system. The most frequently used species are Carthamus tinctorius, Brag-zhun, Swertia chirayita, Swertia mussotii, Halenia elliptica, Herpetospermum pedunculosum, and Phyllanthus emblica. Their names, families, medicinal parts, traditional uses, phytochemicals information, and pharmacological activities were described in detail. These natural medicines might be a valuable gift from the old Tibetan medicine to the world, and would be potential drug candidates for the treatment of liver diseases. Further studies are needed to prove their medicinal values in liver diseases treatment, identify bioactive compounds, elucidate the underlying mechanism of action, and clarify their side effects or toxicity with the help of modern phytochemical, pharmacological, metabonomics, and/or clinical trial methods.

A reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method with diode array detection was established to simultaneously determine the seven bioactive lignans in <i>Herpetospermum caudigerum</i>, namely ent-isolariciresinol (<b>1</b>), dehydrodiconiferyl alcohol (<b>2</b>), herpetrione (<b>3</b>), herpetin (<b>4</b>), herpetetrone (<b>5</b>), herpetotriol (<b>6</b>) amd herpetal (<b>7</b>). The HPLC assay was performed on a Restek Pinnacle DB C<sub>18</sub> column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) with gradient elution of acetonitrile and 0.1% phosphoric acid within 65 min. The detection wavelength was 240 nm. The flow-rate was 1.0 mL/min. All calibration curves showed good linearity (<i>r</i>² > 0.9998) within test ranges. The method was reproducible with intra- and inter-day variation of less than 1.98%. The method provided good accuracy with recoveries in the range 95.19-102.64% with RSDs less than 1.52%. The method was successfully applied to the quantification of seven constituents in 15 <i>H. caudigerum</i> samples collected from different cities. The results indicated that the developed assay could be considered as a suitable quality control method for <i>H. caudigerum</i>. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Purpose: To develop an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) - photodiode array (PDA) method to compare the chemical composition of two different medicinal components of Pterocephalus hookeri. Methods: Samples were chromatographically separated in succession using Waters Acquity UPLCR BEH C18 column (2.1 × 100 mm, 1.7 µm) and gradient elution (0.2% phosphoric acid aqueous - acetonitrile). Using partial least squares discriminant analysis and one-way analysis of variance, attempts were made to distinguish different medicinal parts of P. hookeri. Results: Regression equation for 10 compounds showed good linear regression (R² > 0.9994). The relative standard deviations of precision, stability, repeatability and recovery were under 5%. Compared with the aerial plant part, the root had significantly higher levels of sylvestroside I (p < 0.01), cantleyoside (p < 0.001), dipsanosides B (p < 0.01) and dipsanosides A (p < 0.01), but significantly lower levels of loganic acid (p < 0.001), chlorogenic acid (p < 0.01), and isochlorogenic acid (p < 0.01). There were no significant differences between loganin, sweroside and isochlorogenic acid C. Conclusion: The described method is simple, accurate and reproducible, and can be used for the simultaneous determination of 10 major compounds of P. hookeri. The results demonstrate that there is variation in the chemical composition of the aerialpart and root of P. hookeri and that loganic acid and cantleyoside are the primary chemical biomarkers.

Alzheimer disease (Alzheimer Disease, AD) is one of the most common type in senile dementia. Its main pathological features were that a large number of senile plaques gathered in brain extracellular and tangles fibrosis appeared in nerve cells. Currently, the pathogenesis of AD is still uncertain, and scale investigation and combined brain CT, MRI data were analyzed mainly for clinical diagnosis. Mitigation and improvement of the nervous system activity to interfere with the subsequent behavior of the patients are the main methods for treatment. In clinical no drug can really prevent and cure AD. From the view point of Tibetan medicine studies, Tibetan medicine RNSP has effect on improving memory and repairing the neurons in the brain. In this study, we combined the characteristics of AD pathology, pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment methods to explore the feasibility of Tibetan medicine RNSP for the treatment of AD to provide new ideas for the diagnosis and treatment of AD.