Optimization Of Drying Process For Panax Notoginseng And The Physical Properties,bioactivities And Acute Toxicity Of Its Ultrafine Powder

[Objectives]Panax notoginseng?PN?,as one of the first precious Chinese medicinal materials discovered and used in China,is recorded in compendium of materia medica and seeking truth of materia medica that PN can cure all blood diseases.Modern pharmacology has proved that PN not only has the function of promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis,but also has the pharmacological effects of anti-inflammatory,analgesic and antioxidant and the main relevant pharmacodynamic substances are saponins.Because PN is often faced with the loss of efficacy-related saponins in the drying process,and the problems of low bioavailability exist in the use of conventional decoction pieces.Therefore,how to keep as many active ingredients as possible in the processing process and improve the bioavailability of PN has become a hot spot and difficult point in the processing and preparation process of PN products.In the 1990s,in order to improve the efficacy and bioavailability,ultramicro-pulverization technology was introduced into the traditional Chinese medicine processing industry.PN ultrafine powder is one of the types of decoction pieces developed for the efficient use of PN,a precious medicinal material,and is also a common PN product on the market.Some pharmacological studies have found that PN ultrafine powder obtained after ultrafine pulverization has a better efficacy than ordinary powder,but there is a lack of in-depth research on whether it is faced with toxic and side effects when the efficacy is improved.Moreover,there are various drying methods for PN,and whether the drying process before crushing affects the biological activity and toxicity of PN has not been considered.[Methods]1.Collect fresh root and rhizomes of PN,4?storage reserve.2.The effects of drying temperature,slice thickness and drying time on drying characteristics?drying rate and moisture content?,total saponins content and antioxidant activity of PN were investigated by single factor experiment.On this basis,the box-behnken design were adopted,the content of PN saponins and antioxidant activity were used as the evaluation indexes,and the effects of drying temperature,slice thickness and drying time on the evaluation indexes and the interaction between factors were analyzed by using the effect surface method to obtain the optimized drying process of PN.The nutritional composition and anticoagulant activity of PN under the conditions of drying in shade?SHD?and optimal drying condition?OD?were compared to confirm the effect of rapid drying process on the chemical constituents and main pharmacological effects of PN.3.Preparation of ordinary powder and ultrafine powder of PN under optimized drying conditions.The general physical properties and nutrient contents of PN powder and ultrafine powder were compared.4.The pharmacologic effects?in vitro anticoagulation,coagulation,hemostasis,analgesia,anti-inflammatory,antioxidant?and acute toxicity of PN ultrafine powder obtained by different drying methods were systematically investigated with the ordinary powder as the reference,so as to provide data reference for the safe use of PN ultrafine powder.[Results]1.In the study on the rapid drying process of PN,the highest content of PN saponins?7.382%?and the optimal antioxidant activity(EC₅₀=3.282 mg/m L)were obtained when the drying temperature was 65.77?,the slice thickness was 3.11 mm and the drying time was 16 h.After literatures research,found that most studies used sun-drying?SUD?samples of PN as controls,and drying time was lower than that of SUD.In different studies,the increase rates of saponins were very different,it shows that the current research on drying process of PN is unstable.In this study,compared with the SUD samples,the content of saponins in PN obtained by the optimized drying process increased by about 12.19%,indicating that the OD process has more advantages than the SUD process.Compared with PN under SHD,the loss of saponins of PN under OD about8.30%.And the PN obtained under OD had higher contents of total sugar,starch and reducing sugar,while the contents of water,ash,crude protein and crude fat were lower than that of PN under SHD.The OD samples have the significant anticoagulant of APTT?P<0.05?compared to SHD samples.The PT and TT of SHD and OD have no significant difference?P?0.05?.2.The results of physical studies show that compared with ordinary powder,PN ultrafine powder treated under OD has higher moisture absorption,water retention,expansion force and extraction rate.The fluidity and loose density are lower than ordinary powder.In the conventional auxiliary materials,the micro-powder silica gel has the advantages of less dosage and good flow supporting effect,and 0.3%of the ultrafine powder silica gel is the most suitable for the flow supporting agent of PN ultrafine powder.3.The results of pharmacological activity showed that under the same drying conditions,PN ultrafine powder had better in vitro anticoagulant,hemostatic,analgesic and antioxidant activities than ordinary powder.And there was no significant difference in anti-inflammatory activities.For the same type of powder,here was no significant difference of pharmacological activities between SHD and OD samples?P?0.05?.4.The results of the acute toxicity study showed that under the condition of 21 g/?1kg·BW?for 14 days,no acute toxicity was found in PN ultrafine powder and ordinary powder obtained under different dry conditions.[Conclusion]The results of the drying process of PN showed that the optimized drying process can significantly shorten the drying time and improve the drying rate on the premise of retaining as much saponins and antioxidant activity as possible.The results of physical properties showed that compared with ordinary powder,ultrafine powder has higher moisture absorption,water holding capacity,expansion force and extraction rate,but less fluidity and loose density.Compared with the SHD samples of ultrafine powder,the optimized drying process of PN ultrafine powder with similar pharmacological activities ?P?0.05?;Compared with the same drying methods of ordinary powder,PN ultrafine powder has more significant pharmacological activities?P?0.05?.In the acute toxicity test of mice,the mice did not show any adverse reactions,indicating that PN ultrafine powder and ordinary powder under the different drying conditions did not have obvious acute toxicity.