| “Zuiyucai” and “Diaoyangchen” are two medicines from Genus Buddleja. Theformer, the dry whole plants of Buddleja lindleyana Fortune, is poisonous and has afunction of curing cough, bronchitis and asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, tapeworm,injuries, etc. The latter, the dry whole plants of Buddleja albiflora Hemsl. andBuddleja davidii Franch., is a well-known Tujia medicine, which is quite effective forrheumatism. Besides, leaves and roots of B. albiflora and B. davidii can be used in thetherapy of cold, hemorrhaging, traumatic injury, fracture, pruritus of skin as well aseczema. Due to the close relation, especially for B. albiflora and B. davidii, they are sosimilar in botanical morphology, characteristics and microscopic character that it isdifficult to distinguish them. However, most report about “Zuiyucai” and“Diaoyangchen” were about chemical components and pharmacological effects. Therewere hardly documents about the systemic identification or quality analysis. Wecarried out a series of researches to compare these medicines, including macroscopicand microscopic identification, TLC, content determination by ultraviolet-visiblespectrophotometry and HPLC method. All the researches were for the prelimaryestablishment of identification and quality analysis methods. In addition, acute toxicityexperiment was tested to evaluate the toxic, which will pave the way of guidelines forthe quality control and medicinal security, so as to provide the basis for exploitation ofindividual parts of “Zuiyucai” and “Diaoyangchen”.Macroscopic and microscopic studies manifested that there were manycharacteristics in common among the three Buddleja species as their close relationship.Yet each one has its own unique characteristics. They can be distinguished by theshape of stems transversal cutting and existence of the ridges, length and thickness ofstellate hairs.TLC of the stems and leaves of “Zuiyucai” and “Diaoyangchen” was carried outto identify the samples further. The results showed that the six samples had many common spots. Besides, they had a lot of different spots, too. Comparing stems andleaves, the second spots(Rf value was about0.64) were in the same place but withdifferent colors. Stems solution chromatograms showed light yellow while the leavessolutions presented light red. As the same parts, B. lindleyana, B. albiflora and B.davidii still had their characteristics spots respectively. A blue spot(Rf value was about0.45) could only be seen in stem chromatogram of B. lindleyana and twoyellowish-green spots(Rf value were about0.57and0.49respectively) in B. albifloraleaf chromatogram. Those characteristics spots can make them distinguished fromothers easily. What is more, leaves chromatograms of B. albiflora and B. davidii werequite similar, indicated that it was reasonable to be two origins of “Diaoyangchen”.Through content determination, total flavonoids and individual flavonoid contentsin stems and leaves of “Diaoyangchen” were tested. It was obvious to see a significantrelation among medicinal parts, different sources and flavonoids contents. Totalamount of flavonoids was found to be much higher in leaves than stems. We deducedthat the leaves might be the major part of the medicine. Comparing the flavonoidscontent in same parts of different plants, no matter stems or leaves, total flavonoidscontent in B. davidii exceed that of B. albiflora. It seemed that the quality of B. davidiimay surpass that of B. albiflora to a certain extent. However, more pharmacologyresearches were needed to support it. Individual flavonoid content was determined byHPLC method. The analysis result showed quercetin was not checked out in the fourextracts. And luteolin and apigenin could only be determined in leaves of B. davidiiand B. albiflora. And the luteolin and apigenin contents of B. albiflora were manytimes the amount of B. davidii. Conversely, the total flavonoids content in B. davidiileaves was much higher than B. albiflora leaves. The results indicated the the highercontent of total flavonoids did not always mean higher specific flavonoid in themedicinal material of different sources.During the acute toxicity experiment, ethanol extracts of “Diaoyangchen” stemsand leaves were used to douche the stomach of mice. According to their responses, an extremely large dose of the medicine was given. But the mice were still alive in2weeks. The result showed “Diaoyangchen” was low toxic or nontoxic.In short,“Zuiyucai” and “Diaoyangchen” can be identified quickly and accuratelyby the morphological, anatomical and TLC methods. In addition, the contentdetermination can offer some basis for the quality analysis and evaluation. B. davidiiand B. albiflora have more similiaries than B. lindleyana, indicated that theirrelationship should be closer. All the researches will provide certain evidences for theexploitation and utilization of the three medicinal plants in future. |
PDF Full Text Request