| Suanzaoren Tang(SZRT), one of a traditional Chinese herbal medicine ,was mainly used to treat the agitation syndrome caused by the blood of Gan failing to nourish the mind in the ancient times.In modern clinical practice, it is successfully used in anxiety,as well as many other psychological disorders,such as neurasthenia,phobia,depression,insomnia and so on. In man, anxiety neurosis is perceived as an unpleasant affect,characterized by a tense and physically exhaustively alertness, focused on an impending and inevitable, although not objectively apparent, danger or emergency along with a painful awareness of uncertainty about the possibility of resolving the situation. in this paper, we investigated the possiblely potential anxiolytic effect of SZRT in laboratory.To investigate the anxiolytic activity of SZRT, the characteristics of the behavioral effects of SZRT on exploration and on spontaneous locomotor activity both in rats and in mice were studied after oral administration of SZRT for 7 days. In the elevated plus-maze(EPM)test,which is currently one of the most widely used animal models in evaluation of novel anxiolytic agents and to investigate psychological and neurochemical basis of anxiety, the results showed that the animals had a significantly greater interest for the open arm exploration, both does of SZRT(7.5g/kg,15.0g/kg) significantly increased both the number and the ratio of open arm entries ,furthermore,the high does of SZRT could markedly raised the proportion of total time spent on the open arm .At the same time, analysis of spontaneous locomotor activity showed that no significant change took place in the total arm entry in the rats. We also found that more head－dipping could be observed in the unprotected areas of the EPM in rats received SZRT-treatment than normal rats. The holeboard apparatus, as it permits an independent measurement of exploration and locomotion, was used in this test. Head-dipping,locomotor activity, rearing and latency to the first head-dipping were measured in mice. It was found that the latency to the first head-dipping was significantly prolonged in SZRT-treated mouse. Moreover, both the frequency and the duration of head-dipping, which was recorded as a measure of anxiety, obviously decreased. As the indices of locomotion, both the number of rearing and the duration of the mouse moving around in the holeboard were not altered by the treatment of SZRT.These results told us that SZRT was a potentially efficient Anxiolytic.In order to assess the influence of SZRT on immune system in mice, experiments were performed on the 10th day of treatment. The results showed that SZRT (20.0 g/kg) obviously raised the B lymphocyte proliferative response to LPS and a mild rising trend of the production of IL-1 by peritoneal macrophages.on the other hand, the lower does of SZRT (10.0 g/kg) markedly inhibited the proliferation of T lymphocyte induced by ConA and potentiated the phagoctic ability of peritoneal macrophages compared with vehicle-treated group. Our work suggested that SZRT could have played a role in the regulation of immune function in normal mice. To study the changes of central monoamine transmitters and their metabolites induced by SZRT,rats were decapitated and the brains were removed, and two regions of hippocampus and brains cortex of each rat were isolated as soon as the EPM test had been finished.for the mice,the cerebal cortex and the brain stem in each mouse were obtained on the last day of chronic SZRT treatment and the tissue was stored for subsequent determination. Nor-epinephrine (NE) , dopamine(DA), serotonin(5-HT) and their metabolites,3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC), homovanillic acid (HVA) and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid (5-HIAA) were measured by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrochemical detection (HPLC-ECD)．The levels of NE within hippocampus decreased in rats that had been chronicaly pretreated with SZRT relative to vechile-treated mice,obvious reducing in DA and HVA concentration of... |
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