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 ‘cinnamon bark’ were compared among the Korean Pharmacopoeia (KP), the Korean Herbal Pharmacopoeia (KHP), 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 cinnamon bark among the pharmacopoeias, such as the origin, morphological description, identification, purity, loss on drying, ash content, extract content, essential oil content, 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 purpose of this study was to collect information regarding drug formulation based on traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) by reviewing past studies on this topic. The information for this study was collected by reviewing Chinese papers focusing on drug formulation based on TCM. We identified 34 research papers on TCM that were published between 2010 and 2016 for the formulation in the recent at the web site ‘CNKI’. Then, we analyzed these papers according to the subject of the study, the formulation approach described, etc. Most papers emphasized the development and improvement of formulation techniques based on TCM. Most of the studies described a single TCM formulation while focusing mainly on the side effects and safety of TCM injection. Through research on the side effects and bioequivalence of the drugs used in TCM, China is attempting to identify a method for safe and effective formulation of these drugs. Finally, various Chinese patent medicines are used in different formulations, and in-depth research on each formulation is ongoing. Chinese research on formulation of traditional medicine encompasses various fields and perspectives. Thus, further research about TCM is necessary in order to encourage similar modernization in the formulation of traditional Korean medicine. In addition, dosage forms that match consumer preferences should be developed in order to expand the accessibility, ease of administration, and cost-effectiveness of traditional Korean medicine

The complete chloroplast genome (cpDNA) sequence of Aconitum volubile var. pubescens, an important and popular traditional medicinal plant species for Aconiti Kusnezoffii Tuber, is determined in this study. The cpDNA of A. volubile var. pubescens was 155,872 bp in length with 38.12% GC content that composed an 86,348 bp large single-copy (LSC), a 16,944 bp small single-copy (SSC), and a pair of 26,290 bp inverted repeats (IRA and IRB). The cpDNA of A. volubile var. pubescens encodes 131 predicted unique genes including 86 protein-encoding (CDS) genes, 8 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and 37 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the complete cpDNA sequence could be applicable as a super barcode to discriminate A. volubile var. pubescens from its closely related species and provides diverse information to investigate molecular DNA markers for the Aconiti Kusnezoffii Tuber.

Lepidii seu Descurainiae Semen, the seeds of Lepidium apetalum Willdenow and Descurainia sophia Webb. ex Parntl., is an important herbal medicine in Asian countries. Since the morphological similarity of the original plants and seeds, this herbal medicines were adulterated with the seeds of several other plant species including closely related species in the same genus. However, it is very difficult to distinguish authentic herbal medicines from adulterants at the species levels. In this study, we comparatively analyzed the external morphology of two authentic (P. apetalum and D. sophia) and four adulterant plant species (L. virginicum, Draba nemorosa, Erysimum cheiranthoides, and E. macilentum) and summarized the taxonomic classification keys to identify the species based on the morphological characteristics of plant aerial parts. These results could provide useful information for identifying authentic plant species for Lepidii seu Descurainiae Semen.