Mechanism of Pharmacological Action of Chromones in Radix Saposhnikoviae Based on Biological Significance of Secondary Metabolites

According to origin of species, both animals and plants come from a common ancestor, so they all possess similar/same metabolic activities. Plants adapt to stress conditions by eliminating reactive oxygen species (ROS) partly with secondary metabolites, which are often the medicinal ingredients. With this, the mechanism of pharmacological action and biological action of secondary metabolites may be the same. Radix saposhnikoviae the root of Saposhnikovia divaricata, has antipyretic, analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects. It was analyzed that the correlation between fever, analgesia and inflammation and the activities of POD, CAT, the H2O2 contents in serum before and after intravenous administration for cimicifugin, an active component. For the antipyretic, the correlation coefficient between the body temperature and the H2O2 contents was 0.9689 in the model group and 0.5221 in the treatment group, indicating that fever was closely related to the H2O2. In the presence of electron donor, POD can eliminate ROS, the correlation coefficient between POD activities and H2O2 content before and after administration were 0.8085 and -0.5070, respectively, indicating that cimicifugin can eliminate ROS through POD. At 39.5 ℃, POD activity was about 1.47 times that of normal body temperature, and the scavenging efficiency of POD was 2.94 times that of CAT, which indicated that cimicifugin enhanced the elimination of H2O2 mainly through POD. For the analgesic and anti-inflammatory, the correlation coefficients of POD activity with analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects were 0.6685 and 0.4466, respectively, indicating that they were closely related to the H2O2. In this paper, we found the ROS is an important factor of fever, pain and inflammation, the pharmacological actions of Radix Saposhnikoviae also is elimination of ROS through the synergistic action of chromone and POD, the mechanism of pharmacological action of Chromones being the same as the biological action of secondary metabolites.