Traditional and Complementary Medicine Research Program, Health Innovations Research Institute, Bundoora, VIC, Australia.
Biogerontology. 2012 Jun;13(3):299-312. doi: 10.1007/s10522-012-9375-6. Epub 2012 Feb 5.
Natural products are the basis of many systems of traditional medicine and continue to provide sources for new drugs. Ethnobiological approaches to drug discovery that have proven productive in the past include the investigation of traditional medical literatures. This study describes a broadly applicable method for locating, selecting and evaluating citations in the traditional Chinese herbal medicine literature of the dynastic period (until 1911) for specific symptoms or disorders. This methodology is applied to evaluate multi-herb formulae for age-related dementia and memory impairment. Of the 174 multi-herb formulae located in the searches, 19 were for disorders broadly consistent with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and/or Age Associated Memory Impairment (AAMI). These appeared in books written between c. 650 to 1911. Of the 176 herbs that appeared in these 19 formulae, those with the highest frequencies were tabulated and hierarchical cluster analysis was undertaken. Chinese pharmacopoeias were consulted to determine the botanical identity of the herbs and also which herbs within the formulas were specific for memory disorders. This study found that the top ten herbs, in terms of frequency of inclusion in multi-herb formulae specific for age-related memory disorders, were all listed in the pharmacopoeias for memory disorders and these formed three clusters. The herbs identified in this study may warrant further experimental and clinical evaluation both individually and in combination.
天然产物是许多传统医学体系的基础，并且仍然为新药提供来源。过去已被证明卓有成效的药物发现的民族生物学方法包括对传统医学文献的调查。本研究描述了一种广泛适用于定位、选择和评估朝代（1911 年前）传统中草药文献中特定症状或疾病的引用的方法。该方法应用于评估用于治疗与年龄相关的痴呆和记忆障碍的多草药配方。在搜索中找到的 174 种多草药配方中，有 19 种用于治疗与遗忘型轻度认知障碍（MCI）和/或年龄相关的记忆障碍（AAMI）广泛一致的疾病。这些出现在 650 年至 1911 年之间编写的书籍中。在这 19 种配方中出现的 176 种草药中，对出现频率最高的草药进行了列表，并进行了层次聚类分析。查阅中国药典以确定草药的植物学身份，以及配方中哪些草药是针对记忆障碍的。本研究发现，就与年龄相关的记忆障碍的多草药配方中包含的频率而言，排名前十的草药均被列入了记忆障碍的药典中，并且这些草药形成了三个聚类。本研究中确定的草药可能需要进一步的实验和临床评估，无论是单独使用还是组合使用。
