Abstract
Ginsenosides are one of major types of bioactive compounds in American ginseng (AG) and utilized to assess the quality of various AG samples. The contents of ginsenosides showed cultivation region-related variation, which is possibly associated with AG’s pharmacological effect difference. Therefore, to reveal the quality difference of AGs in different cultivation regions, AG samples from seven cultivation regions were evaluated via analyzing their contents of nine ginsenosides and the biochemical parameters in AG-treated irradiated mice. Pre-administration of AG decoctions could reversely modulate the irradiation-induced changes of antioxidant enzymatic activity, cytokine level and hormone level in irradiated mice, which demonstrated that AG had the radioprotective effects due to its antioxidative, immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory properties. However, this radioprotection effect varied among different cultivation regions of AGs. Collectively, Beijing and Canada-cultivated AGs had the best radioprotection. Heilongjiang and Jilin-originated AGs had the similar pharmacological effects while USA, Shandong and Shaanxi-grown AGs had closer pharmacological effects. This biochemical measurements-based PCA and heatmap clustering of AGs from seven cultivation regions was nearly consistent with ginsencoside content- and the previous serum metabolome-based analyses. However, the pearson correlation analysis revealed that only Rb3 and Rd were significantly correlated with some of assayed biochemical parameters in irradiated mice pretreated with different cultivation regions of AG extracts.
Highlights
While ionizing radiation (IR) is increasingly used in the successful diagnosis of many human health problems and alone or combinational therapy of human cancers such as breast cancer[1], extraabdominal desmoid tumors[2], lung cancer[3] and prostate cancer[4], the public still need to pay the special attentions to the safety and side effects of the intended radiation exposure e.g during the radiotherapy and chest x-ray diagnosis or unwanted radiation exposure, e.g. Fukushima Nuclear Leak
These ginsenosides were highly related to American ginseng (AG)’s antioxidant, neuroprotective, cardioprotective, antidiabetic and anticancer properties[11,13]. These ginsenosides or most of them were simultaneously quantified by researchers to study the influence of cultivation region and year, extraction and processing on AG quality or ginsenoside content or to distinguish panax species, cultivated and wild AGs21–31,42,43
The total content of Rb1, Re and Rg1 ranged from 24.14 ± 0.63 mg/g (SX) to 46.73 ± 7.35 mg/g (Canada), which indicated that AGs that we collected from seven cultivation regions all met the least percentage quality requirement of AGs as qualified medicine (2%)[45]
Summary
While ionizing radiation (IR) is increasingly used in the successful diagnosis of many human health problems and alone or combinational therapy of human cancers such as breast cancer[1], extraabdominal desmoid tumors[2], lung cancer[3] and prostate cancer[4], the public still need to pay the special attentions to the safety and side effects of the intended radiation exposure e.g during the radiotherapy and chest x-ray diagnosis or unwanted radiation exposure, e.g. Fukushima Nuclear Leak. American ginseng was prescribed in clinic by some Chinese doctors to improve irradiation-induced active syndromes such as oral mucosa inflammation and ulcer during or post radiotherapy of cancers[15,16,17]. Ex-vivo experiments showed that American ginseng extract could reduce irradiation-induced oxidative stress and DNA damage[18,19,20], indicating that it had the radio-protective effects. Studies from Panax ginseng Meyer and Panax notoginseng demonstrated that their extracts and ginsenosides (Rc, Rd and Rg1 etc.) showed radioprotective effects via attenuation of radiation-induced DNA damage, oxidative stress, and inflammation etc.[35,36,37,38,39]. We investigated and evaluated the radioprotective effects of AGs from these cultivation regions via assays of antioxidative, immune function and hormone parameters in various AG-treated irradiated mice. The correlation of ginsenoside variation among different cultivation regions of AGs and the assayed individual radioprotective parameters was analyzed to evaluate the potential roles of the varying ginsenoside contents of AGs from different cultivation regions contributing to the radioprotection difference among them
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