Abstract
BackgroundAcori Tatarinowii Rhizome (ATR) is a well-recognized Chinese herbal medicine prescribed to treat neurological disorders. The essential oil (ATEO) is considered as the active fraction of ATR and the content of ATEO is used as the only indicator for ATR content determination. The quality of ATEO varies widely due to region difference; however, little is known about how to study ATEO quality chemically and biologically in response to region difference. Thus, it is of great importance to identify volatile active components in ATEO to conduct quality study. In this study, we analyzed ATEO from different regions in China using chemical component analysis combined with biological activity evaluation.MethodsGC-MS was used to obtain different volatile component profiles of ATEO and significantly changed volatile components were screened out. The neuroprotective activities of ATEO, including anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation and neurotrophic functions, were revealed in C6 glioma cells. The correlation study between the bioactivities and the components was performed.Results57 volatile components, including terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, aromatic compounds, and other aliphatic compounds, were identified. 8 volatile components (β-asarone, cis-methyl isoeugenol, γ-asarone, methyleugenol, calarene, longifolene, β-caryophyllene and caryophyllene oxide) from ATEO were significantly changed due to region difference and 2 of them (β-asarone and γ-asarone) showed strong correlation with neuroprotective activities.ConclusionsOur results reveal that ATEO from different regions in China show great changes in chemical composition and biological activity. Moreover, phenylpropanoids (β-asarone and γ-asarone) present strong correlation with the bioactivities, which are considered as volatile active components in ATEO. The findings will be useful for the development of quality study of ATEO.
Highlights
Acori Tatarinowii Rhizome (ATR) is a well-recognized Chinese herbal medicine prescribed to treat neurological disorders
Typical Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) spectra of ATR essential oil (ATEO) from six regions are presented in Fig. 1; a wide range of volatile components were unambiguously identified based on mass spectral library (NIST14), MS fragmentation pattern published in the literature, and relative retention index by injecting a mixture of nalkanes [30,31,32,33] (Additional file 2). 57 volatile components, including terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, aromatic compounds, and other aliphatic compounds, were identified and quantification of these components was performed by peak area normalization method, as Significantly changed volatile component analysis in ATEO from six major regions in China To comprehensively analyze the information contained in ATEO from six major regions (AH, HB, HN, JX, YN and ZJ), one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), clustering analysis and PLSDA were applied to classify these data using an online tool, MetaboAnalyst 4.0
The results indicated that the ATEO samples (15 μg/mL) significantly inhibited inflammation by reducing the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6 and Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)), and had great antioxidant and neurotrophic effects in promoting the expression of anti-oxidant proteins (GPx1, superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) and uncoupling protein2 (UCP2)) and neurotrophic factors (NGF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF)) (Fig. 4)
Summary
Acori Tatarinowii Rhizome (ATR) is a well-recognized Chinese herbal medicine prescribed to treat neurological disorders. We analyzed ATEO from different regions in China using chemical component analysis combined with biological activity evaluation. The region difference is likely to be one of the major reasons for the heterogeneous quality of final drugs as the difference directly affects chemical composition and biological activity of Chinese herbal medicine [2, 3]. Current quality study approaches for Chinese herbal medicine are not able to perform an overall evaluation on region difference [4]. Appropriate research is required to deepen the knowledge of quality study with region difference; this knowledge will enhance the regulation and quality of Chinese herbal medicine [5, 6]
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