BackgroundIn traditional medicine, there has been a great deal of research on the effects exhibited by medicinal materials. To study the effects, resources that can systematically describe the chemical compounds in medicinal materials are necessary. In recent years, numerous databases on medicinal materials and constituent compounds have been constructed. However, because these databases provide differing information and the sources of such information are unclear or difficult to verify, it is difficult to decide which database to use. Moreover, there is much overlapping information. The aim of this study was to construct a database of medicinal materials and chemical compounds in Northeast Asian traditional medicine (TM-MC), for which medicinal materials are listed in the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese pharmacopoeias and information on the compound names of medicinal materials can easily be confirmed online.DescriptionTo provide information on the chemical compounds of medicinal materials, chromatography articles from MEDLINE and PubMed Central were searched. After chemical compounds of medicinal materials were extracted by manually investigating the full-text of articles, a database of information on about 14,000 compounds from 536 medicinal materials was built. The database also provides links to the articles from which each medicinal material and chemical compound were extracted.ConclusionTM-MC database provides information on medicinal materials and their chemical compounds from chromatography articles in MEDLINE and PubMed Central. Researchers can easily check relevant information through the links to articles.
The melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) is a peptidergic neuromodulator synthesized by neurons in the lateral hypothalamus and zona incerta. MCHergic neurons project throughout the central nervous system, indicating the involvements of many physiological functions, but the role in pain has yet to be determined. In this study, we found that pMCH−/− mice showed lower baseline pain thresholds to mechanical and thermal stimuli than did pMCH+/+ mice, and the time to reach the maximum hyperalgesic response was also significantly earlier in both inflammatory and neuropathic pain. To examine its pharmacological properties, MCH was administered intranasally into mice, and results indicated that MCH treatment significantly increased mechanical and thermal pain thresholds in both pain models. Antagonist challenges with naltrexone (opioid receptor antagonist) and AM251 (cannabinoid 1 receptor antagonist) reversed the analgesic effects of MCH in both pain models, suggesting the involvement of opioid and cannabinoid systems. MCH treatment also increased the expression and activation of CB1R in the medial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral- and ventrolateral periaqueductal grey. The MCH1R antagonist abolished the effects induced by MCH. This is the first study to suggest novel analgesic actions of MCH, which holds great promise for the application of MCH in the therapy of pain-related diseases.
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