Correlation Of Ginsenosides And Drug Dependence

Objective:Drug abuse in China can be traced back hundreds of years ago. It had a great influence on the modern history of China and even the Chinese civilization. In2006, the "China White Paper on Narcotics" pointed out that the number of people abusing new drugs, such as methamphetamine, ketamine, ecstasy and other drugs, had increased and the way they used drugs had changed from single to multi-opioid drug abuse. Currently, the mechanism of drug addiction had yet to draw firm conclusions. In the course of treatment of drug addicts, the main method still adopted methadone replacement therapy. But most of the drugs had significant side effects and these drugs can not cure the damage of body brought by using addictive drugs. In order to seek effective and low side effects drugs of detoxification, society and the country had made great efforts. After several years of research, we found that drugs addiction may be associated with many receptors, neurotransmitters and brain areas. However, Chinese medicine emphasized the overall concept in the treatment of disease and the traditional Chinese medicine mainly produced efficacy through multiple targets simultaneously. The traditional Chinese medicine theory was important fortune left by our ancestors and it had attracted more and more attention for its unique advantages. There were a number of reported in the literature demonstrated that ginseng had an antagonistic effect of morphine addiction. But most studies focused on compound or ginseng studied as a whole, lacking a detailed study of the monomer components of ginseng.Methods:This paper used the models of spontaneous activity, conditioned place preference and self-administration to test the mental activity of ginseng saponins.Results:1. Addiction research of Chinese medicineConditioned place preference test could be used to test the drug’s central reward role. When we studied the research of detoxification of drug dependence, the results showed that the mixture of ginsenosides and salvianolic acids (4:1) had the effect of drug reward in mice and rats in this test. In a separate study, salvianolic acids did not cause conditioned place preference in rats, indicating that it had no drug reward effect. So the ginsenosides should be responsible for this phenomenon.2. The addiction research of ginsenosidesWe examined the effect of the main ingredients of ginsenosides on the nerve center in mice through locomotor activity, the results indicated that ginsenoside Re at the doses of3mg/kg and10mg/kg can significantly increase the total locomotor activity in mice and showed that ginsenoside Re might be a central stimulant, but Rb1and Rg1had no effect on spontaneous activity at the same doses.In order to test the effect of drug reward of ginsenosides, we adopted the method of conditioned place preference test. Then the main ingredients of ginsenosides were tested and we found that ginsenoside Re at3mg/kg through intravenous administration can produce conditioned place preference, indicating that the drug has rewarding effects. However, at the same doses and the experimental operation, Rgi and Rbi not produced this phenomenon.We also examined the effect of behavior strengthen of ginsenosides through self-administration test. Through intravenous administration, ginsenoside Re at the doses of0.6mg/kg and1.0mg/kg can induce self-administration behavior in rats, indicating that ginsenoside Re had the effect of behavior strengthen and demonstrated that ginsenoside Re had a role in rewards central from a different perspective.The spontaneous activity was used to examine the impact of the main ingredients of ginseng saponin monomer on the nerve center of the mice. The results indicated that ginsenoside Re at the doses of3mg/kg and10mg/kg can significantly increase the amount of loco mo tor activity in mice, indicating ginsenoside Re had a central stimulant, but at the same dose, Rbi and Rgi had no effect on spontaneous activity in mice. In addition, When ginsenoside Re at the dose of10mg/kg and morphine at the dose of15mg/kg were co-administrated, they showed a synergistic effect, and Rbi and Rgi did not show this synergy; when replacing morphine with cocaine, this phenomenon did not appear, and naloxone at the dose of2mg/kg could block this phenomenon, suggesting that ginsenoside Re may be facilitated the pharmacological effects of morphine through the opioid receptors.3. The effects of ginsenosides on opio id-induced hyperalgesia in miceMice appeared drug dependence by injecting morphine at gradually increase doses for seven consecutive days and showed withdrawal symptoms in two days after the final injection. After the final injection of morphine in mice, the treatment groups began to receive two days’ treatment of ginsenosides. In the third day of withdrawal, all the animals were used to test the effect of ginsenosides on hyperalgesia through hot plate and acetic acid-induced writhing. According to the results on the two different models, ginsenoside Re can reverse the hyperalgesia induced by morphine under the dose of300mg/kg, and ginsenoside Rgi and Rbi have no similar effect under the same doses.Conclusion:1) ginsenoside Re has a strong mental activity and possesses potential of drug abuse;2) Re has a synergistic effect with morphine, it can enhance the mental activity of morphine;3) Re can be used as a drug for the treatment of withdrawal symptoms.