Earticle

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 ‘ephedra herb’ 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 (HCS), and the Pharmacopoeia of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DP). There were different requirements of ephedra herb 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.

We reviewed on the changed contents about the origins, phamaceutical names, synonyms, and english names of the latest editions of Korean Pharmacopoeia (KP) and Korean Herbal Pharmacopoeia (KHP). 165 herbal medicinal materials were in KP, and 353s were in KHP. 93 materials were changed at the origins, because of changing of original species, correcting of scientific names, refining of normal words, and specifying of medicinal parts, etc. 51 materials were changed at the latin pharmaceutical names, the main reasons were changing of scientific names and correcting of medicinal parts. And, 82 materials were changed at synonyms or english names, and most of them were decreased or deleted. In KHP, 17 materials were deleted by the whole revising at 2012, and 9 materials were added by the supplementary revising at 2013. Some contents like general species names, scientific names, and latin pharmaceutical names were needed to further modify.

Recently, Ziziphi Mauritianae Semen and Leucaenae Semen, the adulterants of Sanjoin (Ziziphi Spinosae Semen), were distributed in korean herbal markets, although they should not be used as Sanjoin. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a accurate criteria of identification for Sanjoin and the adulterants. For authentication of Sanjoin, morphological characteristics of Sanjoin and the adulterants were compared by a stereoscopic observation. Ziziphi Spinosae Semen showed fine wrinkles on the surface without any patterns, while Ziziphi Mauritianae Semen showed the patterns like leopard skins on the surface. In addition, the shapes of transverse sections of Ziziphi Spinosae Semen and Ziziphi Mauritianae Semen were convex, while that of Leucaenae Semen was flat. These results indicate that the shapes of transverse sections and the characteristic patterns on the surfaces could be the authentic points of discrimination of Sanjoin and the adulterants.

Traditional herbal medicines have been used as alternative medicines in the West and the East. Pinellia ternata (Thunb.) Makino is a herbaceous perennial plant belonging to the Araceae and is growing naturally and distributed on Asia including of Korea, Japan, and China. Pinellia Tuber (origin of plant: P. ternata) has been used widely in Korean traditional herbal medicine as tuber of P. ternata. The origin of herbal medicines in Korea were described by the Korean Pharmacopeia (KP), 11th Edition (2014). Pharmacological action and efficacy studies conducted numerous but, physiological, genetic, and related research were rarely conducted. There were many problems if environmental factors could not be fixed in cultivation and analyzing useful compounds from wild collecting whole plant materials of P. ternata. So, in vitro propagation technology would be a useful technique using plant tissue cultures (callus, adventitious root, multiple shoot, and somatic embryo) or seed germination improvement (temperature, moisture, nutrients, etc.) for optimized generation to increase biomass of Korean herbal medicine. Also, biotechnology approaches (aboitic/biotic elicitors, bioreactor, and single cell cloning) would be another useful technique to enhance metabolite productions and rapid propagation in P. ternata. This study would provide introducing and emphasizing about past, current, and future of research in application of propagation (initial propagation methods, various type of culture system, and regeneration/dedifferentiation) for P. ternata. Therefore, it could provide the status of research and future information to reduce failure risk in R&D of P. ternata.