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Korean herbal medicines have been used for the most medicinal purpose including of treating diseases. To prepare and to manufacture plant specimens are the most basic work for studying about plant species because it shows the pattern of variation and representative flora. The purpose of this article is the preparation of specimen samples and standards to manage and archive as internal or external KHSHR (Korean Herbarium of Standard Herbal Resources) at Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine (KIOM). In addition, this study introduced the features of each institution in Korea compared to the typical production process herbarium specimens for establishing standard infrastructure of herbarium at KIOM to share information and document in the sampling protocol of manufacture.

To search the properties of herbal medicines that have been used for the prevention and treatment of hypertension. Herbal materials of which pharmacological effects were registered in The dictionary of chinese crude drugs (Zhong yao da ci dian, ) 2nd edition were investigated 中藥大辭典 and analyzed. The herbal materials which have anti-hypertensive effect were further analyzed according to the origin, medicinal part, nature, flavor, and meridian tropism of herbal medicines. Overall 288 species of herbal materials showed anti-hypertensive effect. In the medicinal part, the ratio of whole plant was higher than other parts, but the ratio of fruits or seeds are lower than common materials. The natures of cold and cool occupied 47.3%, and the ratio of cool nature was higher than common materials, but the ratio of little cold and warm nature was lower than common materials. Among flavors, bitterness was 38.4% which was higher than other flavors, and the ratio of sweetness and astringency was lower than common materials. Liver and gallbladder meridian exhibited 26.5% of the meridian tropism of herbal medicine, and the ratio of liver meridian was higher than common materials, but the ratio of stomach meridian was lower than common materials. For future study of prevention and treatment for anti- hypertension, useful herbal medicines will be required to preferentially searching for the property which has bitter, cool and liver meridian.

The standards of medicinal herbs are provided differently in each nations. So the dissimilarity of the standards should be verified for the standardization of medicinal herbs. The requirements of ‘pueraria root’ were compared among the Korean Pharmacopoeia (KP), the Japanese Pharmacopoeia (JP), Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China (ChP), Taiwan Herbal Pharmacopeia (THP), Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards (HKCMMS), and the Pharmacopoeia of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DP). There were different requirements of pueraria root among the pharmacopoeias, such as the origin, morphological description, identification, purity, ash content, extract content, loss on drying, and the assay. The differences of standards among northeast-asian countries should be investigated thoroughly in terms of efficacy and safety. This study would be a helpful reference for the revision of the regulation on herbal medicine.

The herbal pill is usually made into several kinds of herbal medicines and supplementary excipients, such as starch, wheat flour, and honey. However, the verification of correct constituents of herbal pill is very difficult because it is composed of powders mixed with diverse herbal medicines. To determine the material composition of an unknown herbal pill, we analyzed DNA barcode sequences and NCBI GenBank nucleotide database on trial. Among the several DNA barcodes, nuclear ribosomal RNA gene internal transcribed spacer 2 region (ITS2) amplified sufficient PCR products to analyze the nucleotide sequences and provided valuable informations to determine the constituents of herbal pill on GenBank blast search. These valuable information is enough to estimate approximately the main herbal medicines as well as excipients. Therefore, we suggest DNA barcode sequence analysis depending on the GenBank database as a tool of quality control method with chemical analysis for herbal pills.

Purpose : To evaluate the genetic diversity and relationship of Polygonati Odorati Rhizoma and Polygonati Rhizoma in Polygonatum species, we carried out the single sequence repeat (SSR) analysis using 8 species 24 germplasm lines collected from different habitat in Korea and China. Materials and Methods : Materials were collected randomly from different geographic regions in Korea and China, and were analyzed simple sequence repeat (SSR) of 120 primer sets which were designed based on next generation sequence (NGS) data. Total bands amplified by SSR primer sets were used to analyze genetic relationship using the unweight pair group method with arithmetic averages (UPGMA). Results : SSR results of 17 primer sets were revealed 68 total band and 57 polymorphic band with a 83.8% ratio of polymorphism. 24 Polygonatum germplasm lines were ranged from 0.62 to 0.95 and clustered distinct three groups depending on the species with 0.66 coefficient value. Conclusion : In this study, 17 SSR primer sets proper to evaluate genetic diverstiy of 8 Polygonatum spp. were selected. 5 species belonging the original plant of Polygonati Odorati Rhizoma, except P. inflatum Kom., were clustered into Group II. P. falcatum A.Gray were classified into Group I and P. sibiricum F.Delaroche were classified into Group III, respectively. These result showed that original plant of Polygonati Rhizoma were genetically different compared to Polygonati Odorati Rhizoma.

To determine whether pattern recognition based on metabolite fingerprinting for whole cell extracts can be used to discriminate cultivation origin metabolically, eight Pinellia tubers (Pinellia ternata) were subjected to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). FT-IR spectral data from Pinellia tubers were analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The dendrogram based on hierarchical clustering analysis of these PCA and PLS-DA data on Pinellia tubers showed that tuber samples were segregated into Chinese and Korean Pinellia in a cultivation origin-dependent manner. Thus we suggested that the hierarchical dendrogram based on PCA and PLS-DA of FT-IR spectral data from tubers represented the most probable chemical relationship between Pinellia tubers. The overall prediction accuracy for discrimination of cultivation origin was 100% in a cross-validation test. These results clearly show that the FT-IR spectra combined with multivariate analysis from Pinellia tubers can be applied as an alternative tool for discriminating of cultivation origin. Furthermore these metabolic discrimination systems could be applied for standardization for herbal medicine resources.

We analyzed Korean Herbal Medicine as known Siberian Ginseng (Eleutherococcus sp.) for valuable proteins by using TLC, HPLC, and SDS-PAGE. This experiment's target is analogizing useful compounds and protein elements which are included in the three Eleutherococus sp. And the main ingredients were the standard compounds : Eleutheroside, Sesamin, and Chiisanoside. First, we made plants' specimens to keep out and performed TLC and HPLC after sampling of specimens. Each extraction liquids of leaf, stem, and root from Eleutherococus sp. were differentially contributed. Chiisanoside was included in leaf of all three Eleutherococus sp. and Sesamin was involved in stem/root of all three Eleutherococus sp. However, Eleutheroside (E) was not detected in leaf of all three species, but detected on the root/stem of E. sessiliflorus and E. divaricatus var. chiisanensis.

The original plant species of Magnoliae Cortex (Hu-Bak in Korean and Hòu-Pò in Chinese) is prescribed as the stem bark of Magnolia officinalis Rehder & E.H.Wilson, Magnolia officinalis var. biloba Rehder & E.H.Wilson, and Magnolia ovobata Thunb. However, the stem bark of Machilus thunbergii Siebold & Zucc. also has been used as a domestic Magnoliae Cortex, To-Hu-Bak. To prevent the distribution of inauthentic Machilus Cortex, we introduced psbA-trnH DNA barcode analysis and established a reliable method for distinguishing between Manoliae Cortex and Machilus Cortex. In comparative analysis of the psbA-trnH sequences using 18 samples of four species, thus, we obtained distinct nucleotide sequences, such as distinct indels (insertions and deletions of nucleotide) and substitutions, enough to differentiate these two herbal materials and evaluated the phylogenetic relationship of these species. The sequence differences at the corresponding alignment positions are useful marker nucleotides to authenticate official Magnoliae Cortex from closely related adulterant of Machilus thunbergii. These marker nucleotides would be useful to standardize the Magnoliae Cortex by the providing of specific genetic information that can distinguish official herbal medicine from inauthentic adulterants for Hu-Bak.

In the present study, the symptoms caused by pathologic dampness-heat were investigated and the therapeutic effects of Scutellaria Radix, Coptidis Rhizoma, and Phellodendri Cortex were analyzed through heat-clearing and dampness-eliminating formulas in Dongeuibogam. Twelve symptoms caused by pathologic dampness-heat were categorized into 4 groups: pain, gastrointestinal, urinary, and dermatic disorders. Scutellaria Radix were used to treat overall dampness-heat-caused disorders, while Coptidis Rhizoma and Phellodendri Cortex were used to treat gastrointestinal and urogenital disorders, respectively.

In the eastern traditional medicine, Gypsum Fibrosum ( ) has been used in a fever 石膏 by its characteristic effect of heat-clearing and fire-purging (淸熱瀉火). This study was aimed to investigate the effect of heat-clearing and fire-purging effect of Gypsum through investigating literatures. The descriptions of medicinal effect of Gypsum Fibrosum were collected from 16 kinds of medical books as well as Treatise on Febrile Diseases (傷寒論) and Detailed Analysis of Epidemic Warm Diseases (溫病條辨). The results of this study suggest that Gypsum Fibrosum was used to treat fever-related symptoms initially in the traditional Chinese medicine. However, the concept of fever was further divided into two categories: fever (熱) and fire (火), which make the concept of fire-purging (瀉火) separated form heat-clearing (清熱). Therefore, the meaning of ‘heat-clearing’ effect should cover diseases caused by pathologic heat and that of ‘fire-purging’ effect should cover severe diseases or mental disorders.