Effects of processing on toxic components of Pinellia Rhizoma and its detoxification mechanism

Abstract

Pinellia Rhizoma is one of the most commonly used medicinal herbs in clinic, but its toxicity couldn't be ignored. Processing is a detoxification method before the toxic traditional Chinese medicine were given to the patients, and mainly impacted the amount of relevant components in Chinese medicinal herbs (increase or decrease). Although there were still some disputes about the toxic components in Pinelliae Rhizoma (mainly referring to the alkaloid substances), more literatures reported that needle-like calcium oxalate crystals and lectin protein in Pinelliae Rhizoma were the main toxic components, and had a significant effect on inflammation and irritation caused by Pinellia Rhizoma. With the development of research methods and the expansion of research angles, researches for the effect of processing on the detoxification mechanism of Pinelliae Rhizoma have been constantly deepened. The recent reports showed that the detoxification mechanism of the herb was correlated with the dosage of detoxifying components, and the effect of relevant excipients in inhibiting a variety of inflammatory cytokines. However, we shall also pay attention to alum and other processing accessories that could cause new toxicity from residual aluminum, and the impact from processing conditions, origin of Chinese medicinal herbs and their combination with other medicinal herbs on Pinellia Rhizoma's toxicity. This paper describes toxic components, different detoxification methods and relevant detoxification mechanisms in Pinelliae Rhizoma to provide the references for further research and development of the plant.

Effect of mineral excipients on processing traditional Chinese medicines: an insight into the components, pharmacodynamics and mechanism

“…Detoxification is also one of the main purposes of Banxia processing, calcium oxalate needle crystal with special crystalline and lectin protein are main toxic components in it. After being processed with alumen, the toxic needle crystal dissolved and corroded, and the agglutinin protein degraded and denatured, so the toxicity is reduced [ 10 , 14 , 17 – 23 ]. However, the lectin protein is also an effective component of Banxia with anti-tumor effect [ 14 ].…”

Heating or ginger extract reduces the content of Pinellia ternata lectin in the raphides of Pinellia tuber

“…Indeed, alum can dissolve the raphides and we prepared the protein sample in PEX using aluminum ion according to the previous study of Yu et al [ 20 ]. According to classical textbooks, ginger extract has been believed to counteract the toxicity of Pinellia tuber, and ginger extract and its component 6-gingerol exhibited a suppressive effect on the inflammation caused by Pinellia tuber [ 21 ]. In our previous study, we found that the lipophilic character of PEX raphides was denatured by heating for 30 min or by the treatment with dried ginger extract, and its acridity was reduced, although the shape of raphides observed by microscopy did not change [ 10 ].…”