Anti-allergy Effect of Gouminjian and Its Components / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

Guominjian is a prescription created by famous traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctor ZHU Zhan-yu. The prescription is composed of four TCMSaposhnikoviae Radix, Mume Fructus, Schisandrae Chinensis Fructus and Stellariae Radix, which are commonly used in clinical practice for allergic skin diseases, such as urticaria, atopic dermatitis and eczema. Although the medicinal composition is simple, the curative effect is remarkable, and the total effective rate of treatment in clinic is as high as 90%. Guominjian has the effects on phlegm and blood stasis, and can relieve itching and reduce capillary permeability by antagonizing histamine, reducing serum immune globulin (Ig) E, inhibiting mast cell degranulation and changing the differentiation of CD4+ T cell subsets, with anti-allergy effect at multi-target, multi-path, multi-levels. Domestic and foreign scholars have screened out the chemical constituents of single herbs in Guominjian, and found anti-allergic active ingredients, such as α-cubebenoate, cimicin, schisandrin, and saposhnikovia divaricata polysaccharide, and the mechanisms are different. However, the effects of TCM compounds are not equal to the simple combination of single herbs, and it is not possible to measure the efficacy of an active ingredient in a single herb. The anti-allergic chemical composition in Guominjian should be comprehensively analyzed to study the anti-allergy effect of Guominjian in an all-round way. However, the current research on Guominjian is only limited to the pharmacodynamics, but there is still lack systematic, comprehensive and holistic understanding of anti-allergic active components in Guominjian, which limits the secondary development and the establishment of standards of Guominjian. Therefore, the authors systematically collect and summarize the anti-allergic modern research results of Guominjian and its components by searching domestic and foreign literatures, in order to further define the research and new mechanism of anti-allergic chemical components and mechanism of Guominjian, and provide reference for the development of anti-allergic new drugs.