ABSTRACT
Arctium lappa Linne (AL) has been widely cultivated for a long time as a popular vegetable. The fruit of AL has been used as an antiphlogistic and expectorant in herbal medicine, the crude drug is known as "burdock" in korea. In pharmaceutical field, a few papers recently reported the antiinflammatory, antiviral, and anticancer effects of this extract. However, the antiallergic effect of AL is unknown. The purpose of this study is to investigate the inhibitory effect of AL on compound 48/80-induced mast cell activation. For this, the effects of AL on the degranulation, the histamine release, and the change of the intracellular cAMP (cyclic adenosine-3, 5monophosphate) levels of rat peritoneal mast cells (RPMC) and the influences of AL on the compound 48/80-induced cutaneous reaction were studied. The results were as follows; 1) the compound 48/80-induced mast cell degranulation and histamine release of RPMC was significantly inhibited by pretreatment with AL, 2) the compound 48/80 decreased the cAMP levels of RPMC, but the compound 48/80-induced the cAMP levels of RPMC were significantly increased by pretreatment with AL, 4) AL significantly inhibited compound 48/80-induced vascular permeability of cutaneous tissue. From the above results, it is suggested that AL contains some substances which inhibit the compound 48/80-induced vascular permeability and mast cell activation.