Yukmijihwang-tang (YMJ), also known as Luweidihuang-tang in China, has been widely used as a general herbal tonic for hundreds of years in many Asian countries. This study examines whether YMJ derivatives (YMJd) enhance cognitive ability in normal human subjects and discusses its potential as treatment for dementia patients with deficient cognitive ability. Subjects were divided into two groups, the placebo-treated group (n = 15) and the YMJd-treated group (n = 20). K-WAIS tests, a Korean version of an individual intelligence quotient (IQ) test, and a P300 latency assessment of event-related potential (ERP) were conducted in order to measure changes in cognitive ability before and after 6 weeks of YMJd treatment. The K-WAIS mean scores of the group treated with YMJd were significantly higher than those of the placebo group (p < 0.05), and their mean P300 latency was substantially shorter (p < 0.005). These results suggest that YMJd treatment accelerates the speed of information processing and enhances cognitive ability. YMJd treatment may help dementia patients or the elderly recover from cognition deficiencies or degeneration in clinic.
Nelumbinis Semen is a well-known traditional herbal medicine frequently used in treatment of depression in many Asian countries. In this study, its anti-depression effects in rats were investigated by comparing the test results of those treated with Nelumbinis Semen to those treated with other herbal anti-depressants, including Rehmanniae Radix Preparat, Corni Fructus, Lycii Fructus, Pinelliae Rhizoma and Hypericum Perforatum. In order to induce depression-like symptoms, the animals were placed under chronic mild stress in the form of overnight illumination for 2 consecutive days. They were treated with the respective herbal extract and forced swimming tests were conducted afterwards. The anti-depression effects of each extract were then evaluated based on a measured index, which consisted of struggling time, first latency and first rest duration. These test results show that Nelumbinis Semen provides greater anti-depression effects than the other herbal extracts. Specifically, only the rats treated with Nelumbinis Semen showed significant increases in struggling time (43.9%, p < 0.005, p = 0.0037) and in first latency time (90.2%, p < 0.05, p = 0.0116). However, the first rest duration for Nelumbinis Semen treated rats was not significantly different from the other rats. It appears that Nelumbinis Semen provides even greater anti-depression effects than Hypericum Perforatum (commonly referred to as St. John's Wort, perhaps the most widely used natural antidepressant today). The anti-depression effects of Nelumbinis Semen might be due to the modulation of the amount of neurotransmitters involved in depression.
Memory may be conceptualized into three phases of information manipulation: those processes that handle the encoding of, storage of, and drawing upon learned and witnessed facts and events, which for humans is encoded physiologically. Two general forms of memory have been classified according to their duration in time: short-term memory (STM), which is rapidly formed and can outlast training from minutes to hours, and long-term memory (LTM), which lasts from hours to days, weeks, or even years.2) The hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a critical role in learning and memory in humans and animals.3) There have been many trials to find memory enhancing or cognition enhancing agents to ameliorate dementia. 8) Other studies report that YMJ increases neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in stressed rats 9) while enhancing memory retention and cognitive activities related to memory processes. 7,8) It is also reported that YMJ reverses scopolamine-induced and p-chloroamphetamine-induced amnesia in rats. 7) In addition, our unpublished data shows that YMJ derivatives (YMJd), including Lycii fructus, enhance memory retention by protecting neuronal cells from attack by reactive oxygen species (data not shown). In our recent study, K-WAIS, the Korean version of the WAIS test, and Event-Related Potential P300 latency during auditory oddball tasks were measured to assess the effect of YMJd on cognitive abilities in normal human subjects before and after 6 weeks of YMJd treatment. We found that the K-WAIS mean scores of the group treated with YMJd were significantly higher than those of the placebo group (pϽ0.05), while their mean P300 latency was substantially shorter (pϽ0.005). These results suggest that YMJd treatment accelerates the speed of information processing and enhances cognitive ability. 10) Thus, those results suggest that YMJ and its derivatives may be useful agents for the enhancement of learning and memory. However, there have been few reported studies on accessing the mechanism of memory enhancement triggered by treatment with YMJ or YMJd. The present study is designed to evaluate the action and mechanism behind the memory-enhancing effect of the herbal extract YMJd. Our results revealed that YMJd has a significant effect on memory enhancement and the expression of genes associated not only with the prevention of neuronal degeneration but also with neuronal growth events. The herbal extract Yukmijihwang-tang (YMJ) has been widely used for centuries as an anti-aging herbal medicine in Asian countries. Among the various modified prescriptions of YMJ, YMJ derivatives (YMJd) were formulated to enhance memory retention. This study has three goals: 1) to quantitatively evaluate the memoryenhancing effect of YMJd using behavior tasks; 2) to use cDNA micro-array tools to identify candidate genes responsible for enhancing memory; and 3) to statistically evaluate the specific gene expression patterns using Real-time PCR. Memory retention abilities are addressed by the passive avoidance task with...
PM-F2-OB is one of the most well-known traditional herbal medicines that are frequently used for the treatment of obesity in Korea. The anti-obesity effect of PM-F2-OB on rats fed a high-fat diet was investigated through analyses of changes in body weight, kidney fat weight, and blood biochemicals including cholesterol, free fatty acid, BUN, creatinine, HDL, LDL, phospholipids, SGOT, SGPT, total lipids, and triglycerides. The subjects in this study were divided into four groups: a normal group with a standard diet (N); a PM-F2-OB treatment group fed a standard diet (N؉PM-F2-OB); a control group fed a high-fat diet (C); and a PM-F2-OB treatment group fed a high-fat diet (C؉PM-F2-OB). There were no significant differences in body weight change between the N and N؉PM-F2-OB treatments. Also, there was no significant difference in the amount of food intake between the C and C؉PM-F2-OB treatments. These results suggest that PM-F2-OB has no significant toxicity and does not induce a dislike for that diet due to its smell or taste. Rats were administered a high-fat diet (20% (w/w)) for six weeks to induce obesity. The study shows that PM-F2-OB significantly prevented increases in body weight, cholesterol, LDL and total lipids that resulted from the high-fat diet. PM-F2-OB also decreased kidney fat weight and free fatty acid, phospholipid, and triglyceride concentrations induced by the high-fat diet to level equals or below the normal diet group. It was concluded from the results that PM-F2-OB has a distinct anti-obesity effect.
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