Herbal remedies for skin care with antibacterial and antifungal activities are prepared from a variety of plant parts such as leaves, stem, root, bark and fruits. These medicines are administered topically and may be applied in the form of cream, lotion, soap, sap, solvent extract and ointment, and have been established to possess antimicrobial properties[1]. The delivery of drugs through the s...

This study evaluated the effects of two Korean traditional plant extracts (Diospyros kaki THUNB. leaf; DK, and Nelumbo nucifera leaf; NN) on the fermentation, functional and sensory properties of herbal yogurts. Compared to control fermentation, all plant extracts increased acidification rate and reduced the time to complete fermentation (pH 4.5). Supplementation of plant extracts and storage t...

Ojeok-san (OJS) is a traditional herbal formula consisting of 17 herbal medicines that has been used to treat various disorders. In this study, quantitative analytical methods were developed using high-performance liquid chromatography equipped with a photodiode array detector to determine 19 marker compounds in OJS preparations, which was then combined with chemometric analysis. The method dev...

Angelica Radix, the roots of the genus Angelica, has been used for more than 2,000 years as a traditional medicine in Eastern Asia. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia records more than 100 herbal formulae containing Angelica roots. There are two common sources of Angelica roots, Angelica sinensis from China and A. gigas from Korea. The two species of Angelica roots differ in their chemical compositions,...

A rapid and selective high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is developed for the separation and determination of caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline. The chromatography is performed on a Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C8 column (4.6x150 mm i.d., 5-microm particle size) at 25 degrees C, with a mobile phase of water-THF (0.1% THF in water, pH 8)-acetonitrile (90:10, v/v). The flow rate is...

Use of herbal remedies in pregnancy may be deleterious to both mother and fetus. Against this background, aqueous and ethanol root bark extracts of Salacia lehmbachii, widely used herbal remedies for treatment of malaria in some localities were evaluated for embryotoxicity and teratogenicity in albino rats. One hundred and five pregnant rats weighing 170-180g were assigned 7 groups (n=15), labe...

Water-soluble ingredients of the herbal medicine sho-saiko-to dose-dependently inhibited the proliferation of a human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (KIM-1) and a cholangiocarcinoma cell line (KMC-1). Fifty % effective doses on day 3 of exposure to sho-saiko-to were 353.5 +/- 32.4 micrograms/ml for KIM-1 and 236.3 +/- 26.5 micrograms/ml for KMC-1. However, almost no suppressive effects were...

Our ancestor found that some of the Chinese herbal drugs were toxic during their clinical practice. They graded the toxicity of Chinese herbal drugs into three degrees and thought that the term "toxicity of the Chinese herbal drugs" could be used in a broad and a narrow sense. In modern times, toxic components of the Chinese herbal drugs and their toxic mechanisms, especially the toxicity on th...

Samul-Tang (Si-Wu-Tang, SMT), composed of four medicinal herbs, is a well-known herbal formula treating hematological disorder or gynecologic disease. However, vascular protective effects of SMT and its molecular mechanisms on the vascular endothelium, known as the central spot of vascular inflammatory process, are not reported. The aim of this study was to investigate vascular protective effec...

Black ginseng (BG) has been widely used as herbal treatment for improving physiological function. In order to investigate the neuroprotective action of this herbal medicine, we examined the influence of BG on the learning and memory of rats using the Morris water maze, and we studied the effects of BG on the central cholinergic system and neural nitric oxide synthesis in the hippocampus of rats...