Quality evaluation of different processed products of Aconiti Lateralis Radix Praeparata combining bioassay and toxicity detection / 药学学报

ABSTRACT

There are many kinds of processed products of Aconiti Lateralis Radix Praeparata (ALRP), but their differences in toxicity and efficacy have not been identified. The minimum premature ventricular contraction (PVC) method was used to evaluate the biological toxicity of eight processed products. The results showed that the minimal toxic dose (MTD) of an ethanol extract of Shengfupian (SFP) was 0.16 g·kg-1, which was much lower than that of Heishunpian (HSP), Baifupian (BFP), Baofupian (BAP), Paofuzi (PFZ) or Zhengfupian (ZFP), with MTDs ranging from 2.64 to 5.75 g·kg-1. No cardiotoxicity was detected with Chaofupian (CFP) and Paotianxiong (PTX). A novel +dp/dtmax assay for acute heart failure in rats was developed to evaluate the cardiac activity. It was found that all eight processed products had cardiac effects, with Shengfupian showing the strongest cardiotonic effect and the ability to restore damaged cardiac function to normal within 15 minutes of injection. Heishunpian, Baifupian and the three other products displayed moderate activity, while Paofuzi and Paotianxiong were the weakest. An LC-MS/MS method was utilized to determine the content of 13 alkaloids in water extracts. The results demonstrated that hypertoxic aconitine, mesaconitine, and hypaconitine could not be detected, higenamine was only present in Shengfupian, and salsolinol was about 4-56 times higher in Shengfupian than in other products. A correlation analysis showed that salsolinol had the best correlation with the cardiotonic index, with a correlation coefficient as high as 0.817, while the three monoester alkaloids failed to correlate with the cardiotonic effect. Higenamine and salsolinol were cardiotonic, while the 11 other components had no cardiotonic activity. This study establishes methods for precise evaluation of cardiotoxicity and cardiac activity, reveals the toxicity and efficacy of common processed products, and identifies the key quality markers for cardiac activity, providing scientific support for the quality evaluation and clinical application of processed products of aconite.