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The property theory is a unique principle instructing traditional Chinese doctors to prescribe proper medicines against diseases. As an essential part of it, the five-flavor theory catalogs various Chinese materia medicas (CMMs) into five flavors (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and pungent) based on their taste and medical functions. Although CMM has been successfully applied in China for thousands of years, it is still a big challenge to interpret CMM flavor via modern biomarkers, further deepening its elusiveness. Herein, to identify the correlation between gut microbiota and CMM flavor, we selected 14 CMMs with different flavors to prepare their aqueous extracts, quantified the contained major chemical components, and then performed full-length 16S rRNA sequencing to analyze the gut microbiota of C57BL/6 mice administrated with CMM extracts. We found that flavones, alkaloids, and saponins were the richest components for sweet-, bitter-, and pungent-flavored CMMs, respectively. Medicines with merged flavors (bitter-pungent and sweet-pungent) displayed mixed profiles of components. According to gut microbial analysis, modulation of CMMs belonging to the same flavor on the taxonomic classification was inconsistent to an extent, while the functional sets of gut microbiota, co-abundance gene groups (CAGs), strongly and differentially responded to distinct flavors. Moreover, these correlations were in line with their pharmacological actions. Therefore, the gut microbial functional sets (CAGs) could act as the possible indicator to reflect CMM flavor, rather than the composition of microbial community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Acetaminophen-related hepatic injury (ARHI) is a kind of acute hepatic injury caused by overdosing acetaminophen, which is mainly related to toxic metabolite production, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction. The extract of Paederia scandens (Lour.) Merr. (PSM) has the abilities of anti-inflammatory, antivirus, and antioxidation. Research studies showed that PSM could improve acute or chronic hepatic injury, while the mechanism of which is still indistinct. Methods. Here, the authors applied the approach based on serum metabonomics combined with network pharmacology to study the protection of PSM on ARHI rats. Results. 10 serum potential biomarkers were found to be closely related to ARHI by metabonomics, while 3 compounds (L-ascorbyl 2,6-dipalmitate, squalene, and tributyl O-acetylcitrate) and 3 targets (NOS2, MAOB, and PDE3A) were found that might be the potential active components and active site of PSM on treating ARHI by network pharmacology analysis. Furthermore, molecular biology strategy was performed to validate whether iNOS/NF-κB signaling pathway is the potential mechanism of PSM treating ARHI. Conclusions. This study indicated that PSM could ameliorate ARHI by iNOS/NF-κB signaling pathway. During ARHI treatment by PSM, L-ascorbyl 2, 6-dipalmitate, squalene, and tributyl O-acetylcitrate might be the potential active components, while the possible active site might be NOS2, MAOB, and PDE3A. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four new phenolic acids, clerodens A–D ( 1 – 4 ) possessing an unusual bicycle [2.2.2] octane moiety were isolated from the whole plants of Clerodendranthus spicatus . Their structures were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic methods, including NMR, MS, and ECD data. All isolates were evaluated for their anti-inflammatory activities on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced nitric oxide (NO) production in RAW 264.7, and compound 4 showed significant inhibitory activities with IC 50 value of 6.8 μM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new ursane-type triterpene, cymosic acid (1) together with two known compounds, 3β,19α-dihydroxy-2-oxo-12-ursen-28-oic acid (2) and 2α,19α-dihydroxy-3-oxo-12-ursen-28-oic acid (3), were isolated from Rosa cymosa Tratt. The structure of compound 1 was elucidated by analyzing its 1H and 13C NMR, 1H–1H COSY, HSQC, HMBC, NOESY, and HR-ESI-MS values. The three compounds were found to display moderate inhibitory activities against nitric oxide production in lipopolysaccharide-activated macrophage cell lines, RAW 264.7 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]