Advance in studies on anti-diabetic mechanism of Gardeniae Fructus and its active ingredient geniposide / 中国中药杂志

The diabetes is mainly treated by the oral administration of western medicines at present. Despite their rapid curative effect, there have been still many reports for the western medicines about their clinical adverse reactions, failure of effective prevention and treatment of complications and drug resistance. Hence, they are not suitable for long-term administration. Traditional Chinese medicines have a long history in treating diabetes mellitus (DM) , which is commonly known as Xiaokezheng in the theory of traditional Chinese medicines. In recent years, many scholars have taken extracts from traditional Chinese medicines or separated active constituents as the study objects in the expectation of developing new-type drugs for treating and preventing diabetes. Therefore, a large number of study reports have been emerged in this field. Due to their significant glucose-reducing effect and specific effect in treating complications of diabetes, traditional Chinese medicine Gardeniae Fructus and its iridoid component geniposide shall be given full attention. This paper summarized the advance in studies on the curative effect and action mechanism of Gardeniae Fructus and geniposide in preventing and treating diabetes.

Hypoglycemic effect of geniposide and its relative mechanism / 中草药

Objective: To investigate the hypoglycemic effect of geniposide and to explore the mechanism. Methods: The diabetic mice were induced by a single dose of 90 mg/kg streptozotocin (STZ) injection followed by four-week high-fat diets and randomly divided into three groups: normal control (con), diabetic model (diab), and geniposide (gen, 100 mg/kg) groups. Body weight and fasting blood glucose were measured during the treatment. Thirty days later, the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed, blood samples were collected to measure insulin concentration in plasma. The morphological changes of pancreas pathology and β-cell proliferation were examined by immuno-fluorescent staining of insulin and Ki67. The phosphorylations of AKT and GSK-3β (p-AKT and p-GSK-3β) in liver tissues were detected by Western blotting assay. Results: Compared with the diab group, geniposide showed significantly hypoglycemic effect, together with lowering body weight, increasing the insulin content in plasma, and improving OGTT. The immuno-fluorescent staining showed the islets destruction caused by hyperglycemia was recovered by geniposide. The β-cell proliferation presented by Ki67 staining increased as compared with that in the diab group. Moreover, both p-Akt and p-GSK-3β levels in the liver tissue were upregulated by geniposide remarkably. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that geniposide could ameliorate the hyperglycemia in diabetic mice by enhancing the pancreatic β-cell proliferation and activation of AKT signaling pathway in liver.

Study on dosage form design for improving oral bioavailability of traditional Chinese medicines / 中国中药杂志

Both chemical drugs and traditional Chinese medicines have the problem of low bioavailability. However, as traditional Chinese medicines are a multi-component complex, their dosage forms are required to be designed in line with their characteristics, in order to improve the bioavailability of traditional Chinese medicines. Traditional Chinese medicines are mostly prepared into pill, powder, paste, elixir and decoction, but with such drawbacks as high administration dose and poor efficacy. With the process of modernization of traditional Chinese medicines, new-type preparations have be developed and made outstanding achievements. However, they fail to make an organic integration between traditional Chinese medicine theories and modern preparation theories. Characteristics of traditional Chinese medicines are required to be taken into account during the development of traditional Chinese medicines. In the article, multi-component preparation technology was adopted to establish a multi-component drug release system of traditional Chinese medicines on the basis of multiple components of traditional Chinese medicines.