Traditional oriental herbal medicine, Jukyeoondam-tang, occludes aconitine-induced ventricular arrhythmia in hearts

We showed the effects of the traditional herbal medicine, Jukyeoondam-tang (JO-T, Zhu-ru-Wen-Dan-Tang in Chinese), on ventricular arrhythmia induced by aconitine. Electrophysiological experiments with conventional microelectrode techniques revealed that JO-T potently suppressed the aconitine-induced arrhythmias in ventricular strips of the rat. In the aconitine-induced arrhythmia model of the rat, pretreatment with JO-T completely occluded the appearance of ventricular tachyarrhythmia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF) induced by aconitine. Furthermore, the aconitine-induced ventricular arrhythmia was occluded by channel blocker quinidine but was not occluded by channel blocker glibenclamide channel blocker nifedipine . We also confirmed the effect of JO-T in the ischemia-reperfusion (I/R)-induced arrhythmia model of the rat. JO-T did not affect the I/R-induced arrhythmias in rats. JO-T may alleviate the risk of ventricular arrhythmias following aconitine. These results suggest that JO-T is a potent antiarrhythmic drug having a channel-blocking action.