Studies On The Chemical Constituents Of Processed Astragalus.

Astragalus, which belongs to Family Leguminosae, is abundantly distributed in the northeast, northwest and southwest of China. The dried roots of Astragalus are known as "Huangqi" in Chinese medicine. "Huangqi" is the most important tonic in the Traditional Chinese Medicine, and promote the discharge of pus and the growth of new tissue. Previous investigations of Astragalus had yielded numerous flavonoids, saponions, amino acids, and polysaccharides. We didn t found the reports about the study of chemical constituents of the processed Astragalus.We studied the Astragalus carefully in my experience. 15 compounds were isolated from the processed Astragalus membranaceus.with silica gel, Sephadex LH-20, PTLC and HPLC, etc. On the basis of chemical and spectral methods , they were identified as (3R,4R)-3',4'-dimethoxy-2'-hydroxy-isoflavane-4-ol-7-O-(?)-D-glucopyranoside (1) , odoratin-7-O-(?)-D-glucopyranoside (2) , calycosin-7-O-(?)-D-glucopyranoside (3) , soyasaponin I methyl ester (4) , calycosin (5) , 3', 4'-dimethoxy-2'-hydroxy-isoflavane-7-O-(?)-D-glucoside (6) , ononin (7) , astragaloside (?) (8) , isoastragaloside (?) (9) , astragaloside (?) (10) , (?)-sitosterol (11) , (?)-daucosterol (12) , agroastragaloside (?) (13) , astragaloside (?)(14) , isoastragaloside (?)(15) . (1) was a new compound and (4) was isolated from Astragalus for the first time.