Reduction of β-Asarone in Acori Rhizoma by Decoction

Abstract

β-Asarone, the major constituent of the essential oil from the traditional Chinese herbal drug “Acori rhizoma” is regarded as carcinogenic in rodents and potentially genotoxic. Thus, the limit for the ingestion of this constituent from herbal medicinal products has been set at 0.115 mg β-asarone/person/day. The present study demonstrates that a decoction procedure, traditionally used for Chinese herbal preparations and intended as the standard procedure in Ph. Eur., was able to significantly reduce the amount of β-asarone. HPLC analysis indicated that the content of β-asarone in dried herbal drug ranged from 15.22 to 25.34 mg/g. During a 1-hour decoction, the amount of β-asarone decreased more than 85 % and the aqueous extract contained the equivalent of only 0.46–2.19 mg β-asarone per gram of herbal drug. If this aqueous extract was heated for a further 2 hours, the final content of β-asarone was reduced to the equivalent of no more than 0.005 mg per gram of herbal drug. This low level of β-asarone should be acceptable for therapeutic use. It was noted that decoction of Acori rhizoma in the presence of other herbal substances impaired, to some extent, the reduction in β-asarone.

Key words

Acori rhizoma - Acorus tatarinowii Schott - Araceae - β‐asarone - traditional Chinese medicine - HPLC analysis

References

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